New comet

Comet Bradfield

There was no link provided but the link to the site that sends me these alert emails.
Says we will be able to see it with soho. remember the last comet that passed close to the sun has a flare shot out at it.
Here is the email in whole:

This Is SKY & TELESCOPE's AstroAlert for Comets
==================================================================

COMET BRADFIELD, C/2004 F4

William A. Bradfield of Yankalilla, South Australia, has discovered a comet in the constellation Cetus. He first spotted it low in the western evening sky with his 10-inch reflector on March 23rd and 24th, then lost sight of it until April 8th. The find was announced this morning by Daniel W. E. Green of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (cfa-www.harvard.edu...) on IAU Circular 8319.

Green's calculations show that the comet will move even closer to the Sun, both in space and as seen from Earth, until the third week of April. It reaches perihelion on the 17th, when it will be a scant 0.17 astronomical unit (about 25 million kilometers) from the Sun, well inside Mercury's orbit. Even though perhaps brightening to 2nd magnitude, it will be totally impossible to observe for a week or more except via the SOHO Web site (sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...), primarily in the LASCO C3 images. It passes 2.6 degrees from the Sun's center on April 18th. Toward the end of the month Comet Bradfield emerges in the predawn sky for skywatchers in midnorthern latitudes. While rapidly fading, it may become visible in binoculars then.

Indefatigable comet hunter Bradfield, now age 76, is credited with numerous other discoveries dating back to 1972. All 18 of these comets bear his name alone, which means he spotted and reported them well ahead of any other observer. But it's been nine years since his last discovery, C/1995 Q1. Born in New Zealand, Bradfield worked many years for the Australian government as a research scientist on rocket-propulsion systems before retiring in the late 1980s.

The following ephemeris is based on Green's very preliminary orbital elements. For 0 hours UT on each date, it lists the comet's right ascension and declination (equinox 2000.0), distance from Earth (Delta) and the Sun (r) in astronomical units, elongation angle from the Sun, approximate visual magnitude, and constellation. The last column, "optimum latitude" for viewing, indicates the comet is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere before the mid-April invisibility period. Thereafter, those in the Northern Hemisphere are favored.


Roger W. Sinnott
Senior Editor
SKY & TELESCOPE

---------------------------------------------------------------

COMET BRADFIELD, C/2004 F4

2004 RA (2000) Dec Delta r Elong Mag Const OpLat
h m o ' au au o o
Apr 12 2 08.0 -00 41 1.046 0.265 15 3.8 Cet 40S
Apr 13 2 06.6 -00 07 1.005 0.237 14 3.3 Cet 43S
Apr 14 2 04.1 +00 41 0.963 0.212 12 2.9 Cet 46S
Apr 15 2 00.3 +01 52 0.923 0.190 10 2.4 Cet 50S
Apr 16 1 54.9 +03 31 0.886 0.175 8 2.1 Psc 57S
Apr 17 1 48.0 +05 43 0.856 0.169 5 1.9 Psc 70S
Apr 18 1 40.2 +08 23 0.837 0.173 3 1.9 Psc 64S
Apr 19 1 32.3 +11 18 0.830 0.186 4 2.1 Psc 02S
Apr 20 1 25.0 +14 12 0.833 0.206 7 2.5 Psc 17N
Apr 21 1 18.9 +16 57 0.845 0.231 10 2.9 Psc 24N
Apr 22 1 13.8 +19 28 0.862 0.258 13 3.3 Psc 28N
Apr 23 1 09.7 +21 44 0.883 0.287 16 3.7 Psc 30N
Apr 24 1 06.5 +23 47 0.905 0.316 18 4.0 Psc 31N
Apr 25 1 04.0 +25 37 0.930 0.346 20 4.4 Psc 32N
Apr 26 1 02.1 +27 16 0.955 0.375 22 4.7 Psc 33N
Apr 27 1 00.6 +28 46 0.980 0.405 24 5.0 Psc 33N
Apr 28 0 59.6 +30 08 1.005 0.434 25 5.3 Psc 34N
Apr 29 0 58.9 +31 24 1.031 0.462 26 5.6 Psc 34N
Apr 30 0 58.4 +32 33 1.056 0.491 27 5.8 Psc 34N
May 01 0 58.2 +33 37 1.081 0.519 28 6.0 Psc 35N
May 02 0 58.2 +34 37 1.106 0.546 30 6.2 And 35N
May 03 0 58.3 +35 33 1.130 0.573 30 6.5 And 35N

(If the columns of the table don't line up properly, switch to
a fixed-space font like Courier.)

SkyandTelescope.com...

i live in georgia usa will i be able to see this with the naked eye i know my little boy and girl will have a thousand questions that i would love answering.

no surprise....there r lots of comets/asteroids/other fast moving objects that we haven't discovered yet. comets would be more dangerous when it comes to near-earth objects. most of them pass by earth without us knowing and something that big and fast will cause more damage than an asteroid

hey, awesome find. i'll be looking for that as soon as i get a chance.

wget, i'll be open for any questions. u2u me them or post them in the thread in my signature.

When it flys past the sun will it cause a CME like comet Neat?

what day would provide best viewing

Originally posted by energy_wave
When it flys past the sun will it cause a CME like comet Neat?

no idea. it's possible. i didn't know comets could cause that to be honest.

Originally posted by wget
what day would provide best viewing

no, basically, since it's at its brightest. according to that table, the 17th and 18th will be best.

a good site for information on this is www.spaceweather.com...

cfa-www.harvard.edu...

Comet can now be viewed on LASCO C3

1/4 Resolution Animated Gif

1/2 Resolution Animated Gif

1/2 Resolution MPEG

[Edited on 4-17-2004 by William One Sac]

here's a link to some info on when and where to look for the comets. as well as, who can and cant see the comets.

here is a shot of the comet from soho

This above picture updates from the site so there is no need to surf for a current position on the comet.

Good find I must pencil it in my diary.
I remember when Hale-Bopp appeared. It was weird to look up and see that thing in the sky.

Jim McCanney seems to believe that NASA is BSing all of us with the SOHO images.

A quote form his site:

"April 18, 2004 early morning post on comet bradfield and nasa hiding the data ... nasa pulled down all soho feeds as the comet began to approach perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on early morning april 17 .... none of the data has been available showing they are seeing data that would confirm my plasma discharge comet model and disprove their dirty snow ball comet model ... early this morning the first image came out in the form of a thumbnail print BUT what it shows is that they took the image of the comet that was there over a day ago and cut and pasted it into the C3 soho background FAKING THE DATA AS THEY DID WITH COMET NEAT V1 in february of 2003 ... the thumnail is shown below / the comet should be swinging around the sun and note it is the exact same image as below and even left in the same relative position as it was nearly 24 hours ago ... IMPOSSIBLE !!!!! it also appears that they took a C3 background from many hours earlier as the stars have not moved as they should have so they are faking that also pretending that the sun is not reacting to the comet ... the entire picture has been faked ... nasa scientists are involved in criminal activity..."

I did see an animation about a week ago(not released by NASA) as to what the comet should look like on the SOHO images as it passed the sun. It is very different than what is currently seen on the SOHO images. Ill try to find it and post it.


Im not sure i believe what Jim is saying, but i definately dont think he is FOS at all!

I was watching the mpeg version of the pic and as it closes in on the sun it seems the video has been chopped or some scenes were cut out. When it approaches the sun it dissappears then reapears closer to the sun. I know these pics are taken in intervils or time lapse but the end loos odd anyhow.

What would thay have cut out?

Trying this out to see if it works.



Ok, Cool......
It may be just the comet speeding up as it aproaches the sun to be slingshot around the solar system once again.

The feed was definitely cut for part of the animation. However, this happens quite frequently, I wouldnt be so quick to think it is neccessarily a conspiracy right off. I will check and see if I can find why the feed went down.

For some reason the gif image is not working above.
Anyway, if it does....look at the ring the sun blows at the comet after it passes out of the cameras view. Anyone ever seen a sunflare ring before?








On the date almost a whole day is cut out of the video.
It records on 2004/04/17 at 0354 then cuts to 2354 the pictures that make this video seem to be taken once an hour with an hour or two skip every once in a while. But almost a whole day?

Another thing is the time sequence on 2004/04/18 at 2154 then it goes back in time 1 hour to 2045 then to 2254. Hmmm....
Also on 2004/04/18 at 0254 it goes back one hour to 0154 then to 0654.

I watched it over and over again and also noticed at the time of the time reversal, there is a long streak across the sky just like a shooting star. Anyone else see the things I'm talking about?


Ok now its sometimes normal to cut stuff out of clips like this but, is it normal for the comet to move backwards and the time on the clock in the image go back an hour "normal" for the govt to do??

Well, I'd like to be able to say it was some really outrageous conspiracy; that we've been told by Men in Black that we can't publish the images because they show incontrovertible evidence of extraterrestrial fast food restaurants; that some weird ray from Planet X interfered with our reception; or that the dog ate our images. Unfortunately, what happened was a lot more prosaic. Actually, it was two things:

Full Story: sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

www.spaceweather.com...

This is the site I use to check sunspots and flares.

They have the pictures you have as a video. You can add it, its better to see. Plus You can get some insite about the flares and spots.