Comet Elenin size, distance and scale explained.

The aim of this thread is to truly give a scale of how small and insignificant comet Elenin is, it should also give a scale of how extremely far away it is at the moment and where it will be at the end of this year.

I have being doing this for a few hours and have made some graphical images to help you understand.

So for people who don’t know... our planet Earth is approx 6,378Km in diameter Wiki and our Moon 1,738Km Wiki and comet Elenin a whopping 4Km Wiki



It is so small that it cant even be depicted as a single pixel in the above image.

So now I want to give you a scale of how big comet Elenin is, well its 4Km in diameter so lets say that each pixel is 4Km I would get the image below:



A quick calculation would say the moon should be 435 pixels (rounded by ½ a pixel) so the image is to scale. As you can see comet Elenin as a pixel (on the left) is tiny compared the moon never mind to our own planet! In fact seeing comet Elenin can only be shown as a pixel I will refer to it as “Pixel Elenin” from now on.

So how far away is Pixel Elenin? Well... very very very far I first need you to look at this image:



Do you notice anything about this image? Look closer... Pixel Elenin is nearly twice the distance away of our own sun! The sun is approx 150 million Km away from our planet and Pixel Elenin is a whopping 291 million Km away from our planet as of today that's nearly double the distance!

Now to help give you an visual idea of distance, I need you to understand the scale of the sun, lets say each pixel is 1,000Km:



So the earth is now 6 pixels, Jupiter is 71 pixels and the sun is a huge 1400 pixels, as you can see in this image the earth is around the same size as Jupiter's red spot, a storm the size of our planet? Can you imagine...

I want to get the sun in the image now to give you a scale of it compared to earth so now lets say that each pixel is 5,600Km that would make the sun 250 pixels Jupiter 12 pixels and the earth 1 pixel:



Now think of how big the sun looks on this picture and how big it looks when you see it in the sky and that will give you an idea of what 150 million Km distance is... Pixel Elenin is nearly double this distance from our planet: (291 million Km away as of today)



To think that something so small and further away than our own sun would have any effect on our planet at this point becomes laughable.

Here is the only know image (that I know of) of Elenin at the moment:



So what of the close encounter at the end of the year? Well take a look at this next image:



As you can see the date is now showing Oct 18, 2011, the problem with this graph is that it shows the earth and comet as the same size and doesn't give a true sense of scale in fact the distance between Pixel Elenin and earth on this graph is actually 34,856,344 Km, yes that's 34 million Km!

Now lets get a scale of that once again lets say the each pixel is 416Km:



This would make the earth (on the left) 15 pixels, the moon (on the right) 4 pixels and the distance between them 600 pixels, this is a true sense of scale of how far away the moon actually is from earth not like the documentaries or mock up images you see, the moon is approx 240,000 Km away.

So how does Pixel Elenin which on this date would be 34 million Km away factor in this? Well in the image above it would be 83,789 pixels along the screen if you have a screen resolution of 1280x720 you would have to have 65 monitors side by side to show how far Pixel Elenin is from the earth seen on the left of the image...

65 monitors side by side! Look at the size of the moon in the pic above and then at Pixel Elenin below:



Even if the comet has slight changes in its orbit the distances are so vast that it will still come nowhere near us, and we wont have to worry about travelling through its tail or any debris it brings with it, just look at it compared to the moon...

Most astronomers say that it wont be visible to the naked eye as it will be too dim but you might be able to see it with a telescope.

Anyway hope you like the thread, peace out!

Well done the only thing I would say is you are going to be able to see it at night, now how long the tail is will be determined by how it interacts with the sun. It still will be good to see a nice comet again in the night sky. Thanks for some sanity on this issue.

Very interesting. I am kinda thinking that it won't end all life as we know it but if it were to be off and hit earth then it could cause alot of damage! imagine 4km hitting NYC it would kill 1,000s if not more. I like the pictures that show it to scale though. Nice find.

Thats assuming that it is only 4km diameter and we havnt been lied too...
Plus what about comet HONDA passing by around he exact same time...
that photo of elenin looks like a craft or something..??

reply to post by badgerman24


I done all the images myself in photoshop

First of all, nice avatar.
Secondly, This whole going into pixel thing is pretty funny since making it into the size of a pixel basically gives it the image of "You shouldn't care about this"
This is great info, and you did a great job presenting it and all i have to say is
/Facepalm to anyone that thinks it is catastrophic unless we get evidence that it is.

Nice post!
Simple and neat.

It wont therefore:

1) be visible naked eye (we'll have to use domestic equipments to track it once cuts our orbit)
2) affect our planet (4 km in diameter using gravitational newton laws gives us zero point lots of zeros something)

now we can finish our morning coffees in a peacfeful state of mind oh and the only picture reminds me so much of the Enterprise! gotta love this Elenin

reply to post by grindhouzer


It was 4 separate exposures that's why you see 4 dots in a line

Your post is fine provided we aren't being lied to as another user said.

Where are you getting the info about its size? AFAIK NASA are the only ones who have said its 4km long - is that true or are there more sources? Can amatuers spot it yet?

Second, if a 4km comet hits the earth there will be deaths. It wouldn't be extinction time but its gonna hurt. Even its the size of a pixel compared to the earth, its a 4km rock that's travelling really fast.

reply to post by Cecilofs


Yes but the post was to show that its not coming anyway near the earth in fact the closest it gets is 34 million Kilometres

Originally posted by Cecilofs
Your post is fine provided we aren't being lied to as another user said.

Where are you getting the info about its size? AFAIK NASA are the only ones who have said its 4km long - is that true or are there more sources? Can amatuers spot it yet?

Second, if a 4km comet hits the earth there will be deaths. It wouldn't be extinction time but its gonna hurt. Even its the size of a pixel compared to the earth, its a 4km rock that's travelling really fast.

I think we dont know if its true the comet has 4km long.
There are several other sources but none sufficiently academic or credible enough.
I remember a later transcription from the controversial cassiopaean experiment about the real size of the comet, the guys are saying is about 500km diameter along the long axis Lolz who knows!

in these days everyone seems to be lying

-

Well based on the scale of things from the OP, if Elenin is the culprit for all these natural disasters etc on Earth....

Then humanity better never build a really large spaceship like the Enterprise to explore the galaxy, or we will be going around screwing with the geographic stability of other planets that could be teaming with all different kinds of life!!

Now im confused Sooo what's meant to destory earth on 2012 Comet Elenin or Nibiru??

Originally posted by Alpal
Now im confused

Sooo what's meant to destory earth on 2012 Comet Elenin or Nibiru??

Your mind!
Also this is an excellent thread and i'd rather not see it steer into the End of the world discussion....
The OP wanted to just provide some info that he created visually on the object.. (Which i absolutely love!!!! Someone taking the time for this really desirves my respect!)

So, where did you get those figures from? I know there's alot of good people working at NASA, but I just don't believe they themselves are getting data before it's been "reviewed" and deemed suitable for civilian eyes. You have to remember , NASA is run by the military and all data would be reviewed to filter out anything that would fall under the "National Security" umbrella. I'm no expert on this and certainly don't want to come off as a conspiracy theorist. I just feel I/we the people have been lied to for decades by the military, and most of the crooks in Washington. No offense to you(OP) on you info, but I don't know you personally.

reply to post by cal71919


Where did people hear about this comet in the first place?

If NASA didn't want us to know about this comet, they could just have kept quiet in the first place

Wake me up when the amateur comet/asteriod hunters starts sounding the alarms, There are to many armchair scientists/astronomers these days trolling for exposure

reply to post by roughycannon


An excellent piece of work. If I could give you more stars and flags I would.

I will add a link to this on my Elenin thread.

Edit: to say done!

If I'm not mistaken, a Russian amateur astronamer discovered it. I don't claim to be one so I ask, could he have determined the size, speed, and or trajectory of said comet? I guess that's where NASA comes in. If it was substantially bigger and posed a threat of any kind to us, would NASA disclose that? I think not. That's the point I was trying to make.

russian astronomer was LEOnid Elenin...
hichlighted LEO =lion
comet elenin comes from lion constallation to us...
weird but sometimes things happen

only 4k in diameter.. but wat is the substance of it ...only ice/rock
ore remains of an starving star covered with ice.....???????
then we can speak of super heavy metal and an enormous gravity field....

reply to post by ressiv


Well that's a bit of a moot point really, giving the scale of things in my post even it it was a 4Km boulder of pure iron it wouldn't have an enormous gravitational force... thats ridiculous.