Comet Elenin is coming!

Originally posted by UKTruth

Originally posted by UKTruth

Originally posted by ozbserver
Hi , i think i'm seeing this comet . I live in Australia , Brisbane and for the last few weeks on my way home from work at 4am i can see a bright large star looking object to the east 25' / 30' degrees up from the horizon , it looks awesome and i can't wait for it to come closer .
Can anyone confirm that this is the comet and not some other star please .

Thank you
ozbserver

I think the position is currently to the bottom left area of the constellation Leo. There is a chart earlier in this thread that plots the position by date.

Do you have any pictures, or a pic/ video you can take through a telescope? It probably doesn't have the magnitude to see through the naked eye at the moment...

Just looked at Stellarium. Leo is very low on the horizon in the western sky in Brisbane at the moment. I think what you might be seeing in the eastern sky is Venus, which is currently in the constellation Aquarius, not far above the horizon at 4am.

45 degrees above horizon?

Originally posted by guessing

Originally posted by UKTruth

Originally posted by UKTruth

Originally posted by ozbserver
Hi , i think i'm seeing this comet . I live in Australia , Brisbane and for the last few weeks on my way home from work at 4am i can see a bright large star looking object to the east 25' / 30' degrees up from the horizon , it looks awesome and i can't wait for it to come closer .
Can anyone confirm that this is the comet and not some other star please .

Thank you
ozbserver

I think the position is currently to the bottom left area of the constellation Leo. There is a chart earlier in this thread that plots the position by date.

Do you have any pictures, or a pic/ video you can take through a telescope? It probably doesn't have the magnitude to see through the naked eye at the moment...

Just looked at Stellarium. Leo is very low on the horizon in the western sky in Brisbane at the moment. I think what you might be seeing in the eastern sky is Venus, which is currently in the constellation Aquarius, not far above the horizon at 4am.

45 degrees above horizon?

Yes, it would appear ~45 degrees (maybe a little less), if you mean the angle created from a straight line from you to the horizon and a straight line of sight to Venus.

Venus will be very bright in the east for you (magnitude -3.9), slightly to your right of dead east. So if its not what you are seeing, you should also be able to see Venus as a much brighter object.

Thank you very much for that. I will say you are correct

Originally posted by UKTruth
I think it is possible . Why? You mentioned Ceres in your follow up post - if we had this conversation five short years ago, Ceres would have been an asteroid.

Well, it's not an asteroid by the modern definition, so that doesn't matter. "Asteroid" has a specific meaning which you have been ignoring the entire time we've had this conversation and that meaning does not include Ceres.

It's only our meaningless classification that has changed it.

Therein lies my point. The classification system may be meaningless to you, but that does not mean you should act as if it should be meaningless to everyone else. It is why I can say definitively that an asteroid cannot gravitationally perturb Elenin onto a collision course.

Now what if we haven't yet discovered something tucked away in the asteroid belt even bigger than Ceres? Something big enough to perturb the orbit of a comet flying close by? Is it possible we haven't found something that big? I say yes - although unlikely.

Anything that large in the asteroid belt is going to be easily detected long before now, for one thing because it will necessarily reflect enough light to be that detectable, even if it's the blackest object in the solar system. Even if Ceres were as black as asphalt its apparent magnitude would still be about 7 at opposition. Even if it were twice as black as the darkest known objects in the solar system it would still be around magnitude 9.

Let's say for the sake of argument that it's magical though and it reflects no light at all, maybe it's a small black hole. If it's gravitationally strong enough to perturb Elenin that much then it's also going to perturb other asteroids in the belt as well. You just can't hide an object that large sitting that close to earth.

Personally I don't see why I have to accept a classification that continues to change.

And I do not see why you think it's reasonable to act as if others should not accept the current meanings of these terms, in other words, that you should be able to ignore their current definitions and expect that others will understand and agree with you however you use them.

There are many scientists who do not agree with the latest classification, which has many flaws.

The key difference is you wouldn't see those same scientists misusing the terminology when discussing things with others. They wouldn't just ignore the classification simply because they disagreed with it.

So I dont go with your assumption that I wouldn't be understood if I used those terms

They'd know what you're talking about because you used a proper name to describe it. It's when you use the terms by themselves inappropriately, such as acting as if an asteroid could possess enough mass to gravitationally perturb a comet's perigee from about 0.233 AUs to 0 AUs as it passes through the asteroid belt, that problems arise.

This is now somewhat of a general debate, so I'll stop it there, and bring it back on track by saying again that I believe that, however small, there is a chance that Elenin's orbit will change over the next 6 months.

You're generalizing the claim once again. The question is not whether the orbit will change in the next 6 months. There is an uncertainty level associated with the current orbit, it's just much too small to include earth. The question is whether it will hit earth or not.

reply to post by ngchunter


nghunter,

I don't think I have misused any terms in my posts. I just don't hold much stock in man made classifications for objects that are not changing. They don't really mean anything.

As I said, I do agree that its extremely unlikely that any object large enough to shift the orbit of Elenin by 0.233 AU exists, and if asked to bet on whether Elenin would hit earth you wont find me at the front of the queue in the bookies office

I just wont state it as a fact, that's all.

Lets just move on with the thread.

By the way, for those interested in orbital calculations / orbital mechanics - with a fairly easy read - the Wikipedia link is actually not bad.

Orbits

Originally posted by UKTruth
As I said, I do agree that its extremely unlikely that any object large enough to shift the orbit of Elenin by 0.233 AU exists,

I have yet to see how such a thing could exist without being detected?

Lets just move on with the thread.

This is about the first thing you've said I agree with. I was banned yesterday for this, and while I don't really care if I'm banned permanently or not for stating my thoughts, I'm not actively seeking it either.

NASA's Meteroid Environment Office(MEO) as of March 15, 2011 has installed 15+ cameras to be able to detect "meteorites" as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

If Earth passes through comet elenin's tail, wouldn't that make a possibility that we could see alot of rocks falling from the sky? Are these NASA cameras in place to study such events?!?

Originally posted by spydrbyte25
NASA's Meteroid Environment Office(MEO) as of March 15, 2011 has installed 15+ cameras to be able to detect "meteorites" as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

If Earth passes through comet elenin's tail, wouldn't that make a possibility that we could see alot of rocks falling from the sky? Are these NASA cameras in place to study such events?!?

My quess they are expecting a much higher number of meteorites
so what are they not telling us

Hi and thanks for the replies and also hi to guessing from Redlands , i'm at Cornubia which is not far from you fancy that hey , i re studied the object this morning 3.30am and 4 am it appears to be 15 degrees above the horizon my first guess earlier was just a guess it is very bright and could very well be Venus (doh !) i'm a little embarrassed but will keep looking.

Thankyou
ozbsever

reply to post by ozbserver


I saw something very very bright this morning,too. I set my scope to see it and it was very bright and white. Isn't Venus supposed to be blue or green?

Originally posted by ozbserver
Hi and thanks for the replies and also hi to guessing from Redlands , i'm at Cornubia which is not far from you fancy that hey , i re studied the object this morning 3.30am and 4 am it appears to be 15 degrees above the horizon my first guess earlier was just a guess it is very bright and could very well be Venus (doh !) i'm a little embarrassed but will keep looking.

Thankyou
ozbsever

There is this guy with his videos-and-site, who I have been following since January. He insists that what he films in the early hours is NOT a mundane body, but rather, is ( Nibiru, Elenin, Planet X ). Here is the first shot of his, I came across in January. www.youtube.com...

This is his most recent one. www.youtube.com...

But lately, it's dawning on me, that it must be -------- Venus! How could it not be Venus? Venus has been known since Biblical times, as, "The Morning Star" .

He forever insists that he knows it's not a mundane body, but the Bible warns, "Pride goeth before a fall....."

reply to post by thorazineshuffle

Venus is covered with clouds. It is white. Very white and very bright.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by thorazineshuffle

 

Venus is covered with clouds. It is white. Very white and very bright.

edit on 3/23/2011 by Phage because: (no reason given)

from where i sit it is sooo white that you need sunglasses to actually look at it at 4 am

that is white....

so where is this god dam nibiru thingy,, hmmmm... hmmmm

reply to post by ozbserver


not far at all mate.. been soooo hot last few days... OMG

again OMG

mhhh, nasa dont know the size....this is bull# they know exactly but dont tell us

People are now saying Elenin is just code word for A Lady With Extinction Level Event

reply to post by Iwanttobelieve76




Just correcting your link for you.

Edit: I would like to ask one of the 'orbital mechanics lovers' or 'astronomy geeks' (no offence intended) to check out the maths in that video if you can stand watching something from GLP. I would be interested to know what they are basing this on. Is it the visible size in the sky/telescope? Could the object be seen if it is 4km as Leonid Elenin says?

is it really impossible to see something 3 miles wide at the distance where Elenin is supposed to be ?

5000 km diameter? Earth is 12,756 km diameter...

if it is this large then when we pass through the tail, presumably in Oct?




But hang on , if it was 5000 odd Km dia , we should easily be able to see it in the night sky?

I just want the truth............... Please, for $%#@$% Sake

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by Iwanttobelieve76

 

Just correcting your link for you.

Edit: I would like to ask one of the 'orbital mechanics lovers' or 'astronomy geeks' (no offence intended) to check out the maths in that video if you can stand watching something from GLP. I would be interested to know what they are basing this on. Is it the visible size in the sky/telescope? Could the object be seen if it is 4km as Leonid Elenin says?

edit on 24/3/2011 by PuterMan because: (no reason given)

The formula in the video doesn't solve to the diameter shown, but given the parameters, the result is correct!

Use the following to calculate angular diameter:

D = 2.π.d.A/360

D = angular diameter
d = distance to object
A = angular size in degrees

therefore D (the diameter of the object) =

(2*3.141592653*545000000*0.00055556)/360 =

5,285 km

Now what I don't know is if Elenin is 2 arc seconds in the sky.

According to NASA, on the 3rd Jan 2011, Elenin's distance from Earth was 3.66AU, or 547,528,680km (probably a rounding error compared to the number in the video). But using the NASA number the solution would be:

(2*3.141592653*547528680*0.00055556)/360 =

5,309 km

Obviously the key data as stated is the value for arc seconds - I haven't seen this anywhere before.

Here's a link that's useful:

Planetary Properties