Comet Elenin PIC/DATA!

reply to post by flashcube


Elenin is orbiting the sun. An object orbiting any other object can have a very elliptical orbit as long as it remains within the parent object's hill sphere. A highly elliptical orbit for a comet does not preclude a circular orbit for a planet, however. Perhaps if you read this and play around with the corresponding simulator you'll have a better understanding of how orbital dynamics work.
www.amcsorley.dsl.pipex.com...
orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk...

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13

Yeah. But a fuzzball is a fuzzball even when zoomed in.
I doubt Hubble would provide much more visual information.

reply to post by ngchunter


Well thanks all for the input into the thread, I may check back in later to see the comments if any. Until then.
Be well

is it just me or does that look more like a space ship than a comet? seen pics of comets before and that just does not look right

It's just you because it looks just like a tiny fuzz ball with a teardrop shape due to a tiny tail forming.

It doesn't look like much now - just a 19th-magnitude smudge tucked away in southwestern Virgo - but a newly discovered comet could become something special 10 months from now.

Comet Elenin (C/2010 X1) made its debut on December 10th when Leonid Elenin, an observer in Lyubertsy, Russia, remotely acquired four 4-minute-long images using an 18-inch (45-cm) telescope at the ISON-NM observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico. Follow-up images by Aleksei Sergeyev and Artem Novichenko at Maidanak Observatory in Uzbekistan revealed more about the new find: a teardrop-shaped, very diffuse coma just 6 arcseconds across and a tiny tail.

What's gotten hearts beating a little faster since the discovery is that Comet Elenin is still more than 4 astronomical units (375 million miles) from the Sun and headed inbound. It's still early, and the orbit is certain to change in the weeks ahead, but right now it appears the comet's perihelion will occur well inside Earth's orbit, about 0.45 a.u. (42 million miles) from the Sun, on September 5th.

Right now, odds are that Comet Elenin will become an easy target for binoculars around mid-August and reach naked-eye visibility for a couple of weeks around perihelion. The comet's elongation from the Sun shrinks to just 1° following perihelion, but soon thereafter the comet gets enough separate to position itself nicely for viewing in the predawn sky.

Moreover, it's traveling very near the ecliptic plane, and as it sweeps close to the Sun its sky location won't stray far from the celestial equator until mid-September, when the path arcs slowly northwestward through Leo. That's a plus for skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Finally, because Comet Elenin passes between the Sun and Earth, there's a chance its dust tail might "light up" due to the large Sun-comet-Earth angle and put on a really good show. (The last interloper to do this, Comet McNaught, dazzled southern skygazers in January 2007.)

www.sott.net...

Originally posted by pazcat
reply to post by flashcube

 

Just why is it important to many folks here? It is just a comet, it may be visible to the naked eye, may be not I guess we will have to wait. There have been many comets before that and there will be many after it, I want to know what makes this one particularly special from the rest.

edit:
lol supercomet?
What?
No it will not.

edit on 9-3-2011 by pazcat because: stupidosity

Cause some crazy b%$ch was talking to aliens in her sleep and posted a youtube video of it.
Doesn't matter,we ,the earth is getting ready to split apart in a week or two.

How big is this comet is my first question?

And secondly, what are the chances of this comet being caught in the gravitational field of one of the planets and becoming another moon? or is it moving too fast for that?

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13



Thank you for putting a nice package of data together, from various sources.
That's what I think ATS is supposed to be. Applause for you.

Originally posted by pazcat
reply to post by flashcube

 

Just why is it important to many folks here? It is just a comet, it may be visible to the naked eye, may be not I guess we will have to wait. There have been many comets before that and there will be many after it, I want to know what makes this one particularly special from the rest.

edit:
lol supercomet?
What?
No it will not.

edit on 9-3-2011 by pazcat because: stupidosity

sorry for all those who starred you but you are very wrong..

its Elenin's TAIL which makes it so special..

its the 1st time we will witness our planet going through a comet's tail, and no living human being knows exactly what can happen, scientists are hoping that with Elenin's next pass we will be gifted with more data etc..

Comet tail

but as far as if it will happen, if the orbit remained unchanged or slightly deviated , we are going to pass through the tail 100%

Comet Elenin Official FB Group...created by the Comet finder Leonid Elenin..

Facebook Comet Elenin Group

reply to post by heineken

No. Well, you may be right about no one alive remembering it.

As Halley's Comet approached the sun in 1910, astronomers announced that Earth would actually pass through the tail of this comet during May of that year. They assured everyone that our planet was safe and suggested the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile, the doomsayers latched onto a potential link: if comets contain a poisonous gas and if Earth is going to pass through the comet's tail, then the people of Earth were in serious danger.

cometography.com...

Meteor showers are the result of us passing though the tails of comets.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by heineken

 

No. Well, you may be right about no one alive remembering it.

As Halley's Comet approached the sun in 1910, astronomers announced that Earth would actually pass through the tail of this comet during May of that year. They assured everyone that our planet was safe and suggested the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile, the doomsayers latched onto a potential link: if comets contain a poisonous gas and if Earth is going to pass through the comet's tail, then the people of Earth were in serious danger.

cometography.com...

Meteor showers are the result of us passing though the tails of comets.

very cool 10q Phage...a meteor shower is the most likely outcome...but they still have to workout the composition if i'm not wrong...so poisonous gas is still not excluded..we still cant tell the size of Elenin so we have little data

it will be nice if you put up a Comet Elenin FAQ Thread dont you think

I would think there is no chance of gases being a problem even if there is something harmful in them. The matter would be diffuse and would be ionized on entry.

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13

Hi Orphiuchus, I found this video and would like your opinion about it, please.



Hmmm....

reply to post by Antoniastar


Quite possibly one of the worst "astronomy" related videos I've ever seen. Leonid Elenin is an amateur astronomer, not astrologer, so the person can't even get the name of the field right. He shows an image claiming to be from a "Mead" telescope at 1000x. That's Meade, not Mead, and no Meade telescope is capable of 1000x useful magnification (that would require a 20" telescope and perfect adaptive optics, features you won't find on any Meade telescope), especially while hunting for a deep space object like a comet where high magnification is the exact opposite of what you want. The image actually comes from "astrolpatroit" on youtube who was busted as a lying hoaxer some time ago. He stole an image of a Meade ETX 70 from an actual amateur because the truth is he's not an astronomer and he doesn't have a telescope. It shows too as his claims are full of problems and he demonstrates a complete lack of astronomical knowledge. 1000x from a Meade ETX 70 is one of the more humorous mistakes.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by heineken

 

No. Well, you may be right about no one alive remembering it.

As Halley's Comet approached the sun in 1910, astronomers announced that Earth would actually pass through the tail of this comet during May of that year. They assured everyone that our planet was safe and suggested the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile, the doomsayers latched onto a potential link: if comets contain a poisonous gas and if Earth is going to pass through the comet's tail, then the people of Earth were in serious danger.

cometography.com...

Meteor showers are the result of us passing though the tails of comets.

cant figure out why you posted this link ..cometography.com.....really

especially replying to my post

reply to post by heineken


But he is right, as was I, what exactly do you think causes meteor showers?. It has happened in the past (1910) and will do again. Just because now we are in a better position to study it doesn't mean it is anything out of the ordinary. So other than the point of view from modern science I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at?
But that wasn't the context of my post anyway.

To add(I know you didn't mention it though) there is nothing about this comet to suggest it's tail will explode into a supercomet or any other farcical nonsense as suggested in this thread.
Just incase you hadn't noticed my reply was specifically aimed at two comments above mine, the first of which I still haven't recieved an answer for, not that I would expect it would be an answer based anyway, shape or form in reality

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by loagun
that info is from December 2010, where the current info???? or even ONE picture of the comet aside from the photo-shop NASA fed the public last year....

Number one, NASA had nothing to do with this discovery. Number two, here are a bunch of pictures:

www.aerith.net...

Ahhh it appears you are right. I knew it was discovered by an amateur astrologer outside of NASA, however I was under the impression that NASA quickly stepped in picked up the story, and has been doing the PR about it ever since(it still looks that was if you care to check out NASA's web page).

doesn't it seem a little odd to anyone that the data on JPL has not been updated for at least 5 days and that there is nothing said about the mass of this object?

ssd.jpl.nasa.gov.../2010%20X1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

Originally posted by loagun
Ahhh it appears you are right. I knew it was discovered by an amateur astrologer outside of NASA, however I was under the impression that NASA quickly stepped in picked up the story, and has been doing the PR about it ever since(it still looks that was if you care to check out NASA's web page).

The correct term is astronomer, not astrologer. And I don't think NASA has had much to say about Elenin.