Please Educate Me

Hi, I was hoping someone would be able to educate me with NASA's JPL. I am trying to work out/follow several comets on here. Now this one grabbed my attention mostly:

Comet 2002 qy6

So we have two websites that I used to follow it too:

ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...
hisz.rsoe.hu...

Now what I'd like to understand is why the RSOE EDIS website would have its earth approach date, being today (hence the 0days left) but my understanding is when you go to NASA JPL it doesnt really approach earth until approx Oct 11th/12th.

The next question after that is how come the JPL shows the earth distance, seeminly increasing, from say the 6th oct to the 12th...even though it appears to be decreasing in its distance to us?....

...finally one more question.,,,if the relative velocity is 22.68 km/s, and earth will be in and around its tail, along with other comets in the time period, will we be expecting a bumpy ride? With all these comets close to earth, travelling with high velocity and earth passing in their tails is it anything to be worried about? excited about (will we see a show or two?

Thanks for reading, and if you reply...thanks! I like to learn so if anyone has some answers I'd love to hear them

From other websites, the closest approach of today appears to be the correct value.
After visiting the NASA JPL site, it also appears the same to me, so maybe you were looking at the orbit from an angle, just giving the appearance of being closer on the 12th.

No, we wont be passing through its tail.
Even if we did, nothing will happen. The earth has passed through comet tails in the past... and nothing happened.

Originally posted by Tangled2011
Hi, I was hoping someone would be able to educate me with NASA's JPL. I am trying to work out/follow several comets on here. Now this one grabbed my attention mostly:

Comet 2002 qy6

So we have two websites that I used to follow it too:

ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...
hisz.rsoe.hu...

Now what I'd like to understand is why the RSOE EDIS website would have its earth approach date, being today (hence the 0days left) but my understanding is when you go to NASA JPL it doesnt really approach earth until approx Oct 11th/12th.

First of all, that's not a comet, that's an asteroid. Secondly, JPL does show perigee as today (around 10pm GMT), not the 11th or 12th. I just ran the ephemeris on JPL in one hour segments, here's the output (it's in kilometers, deldot in km/sec):

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Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
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$$SOE
2011-Oct-02 00:00 1.9440085504E+07 -4.2079809
2011-Oct-02 01:00 1.9425097699E+07 -4.1188951
2011-Oct-02 02:00 1.9410430972E+07 -4.0295989
2011-Oct-02 03:00 1.9396086072E+07 -3.9400959
2011-Oct-02 04:00 1.9382063738E+07 -3.8503897
2011-Oct-02 05:00 1.9368364694E+07 -3.7604841
2011-Oct-02 06:00 1.9354989651E+07 -3.6703827
2011-Oct-02 07:00 1.9341939308E+07 -3.5800895
2011-Oct-02 08:00 1.9329214347E+07 -3.4896083
2011-Oct-02 09:00 1.9316815438E+07 -3.3989429
2011-Oct-02 10:00 1.9304743238E+07 -3.3080974
2011-Oct-02 11:00 1.9292998388E+07 -3.2170756
2011-Oct-02 12:00 1.9281581514E+07 -3.1258816
2011-Oct-02 13:00 1.9270493229E+07 -3.0345195
2011-Oct-02 14:00 1.9259734132E+07 -2.9429933
2011-Oct-02 15:00 1.9249304804E+07 -2.8513072
2011-Oct-02 16:00 1.9239205815E+07 -2.7594654
2011-Oct-02 17:00 1.9229437717E+07 -2.6674721
2011-Oct-02 18:00 1.9220001047E+07 -2.5753315
2011-Oct-02 19:00 1.9210896329E+07 -2.4830479
2011-Oct-02 20:00 1.9202124068E+07 -2.3906256
2011-Oct-02 21:00 1.9193684757E+07 -2.2980691
2011-Oct-02 22:00 1.9185578871E+07 -2.2053826
2011-Oct-02 23:00 1.9177806870E+07 -2.1125705
2011-Oct-03 00:00 1.9170369197E+07 -2.0196374
2011-Oct-03 01:00 1.9163266280E+07 -1.9265877
2011-Oct-03 02:00 1.9156498531E+07 -1.8334258
2011-Oct-03 03:00 1.9150066345E+07 -1.7401564
2011-Oct-03 04:00 1.9143970101E+07 -1.6467839
2011-Oct-03 05:00 1.9138210162E+07 -1.5533130
2011-Oct-03 06:00 1.9132786874E+07 -1.4597482
2011-Oct-03 07:00 1.9127700567E+07 -1.3660942
2011-Oct-03 08:00 1.9122951552E+07 -1.2723555
2011-Oct-03 09:00 1.9118540127E+07 -1.1785370
2011-Oct-03 10:00 1.9114466571E+07 -1.0846432
2011-Oct-03 11:00 1.9110731145E+07 -0.9906788
2011-Oct-03 12:00 1.9107334095E+07 -0.8966485
2011-Oct-03 13:00 1.9104275651E+07 -0.8025572
2011-Oct-03 14:00 1.9101556022E+07 -0.7084095
2011-Oct-03 15:00 1.9099175404E+07 -0.6142101
2011-Oct-03 16:00 1.9097133974E+07 -0.5199639
2011-Oct-03 17:00 1.9095431891E+07 -0.4256757
2011-Oct-03 18:00 1.9094069299E+07 -0.3313501
2011-Oct-03 19:00 1.9093046323E+07 -0.2369920
2011-Oct-03 20:00 1.9092363071E+07 -0.1426063
2011-Oct-03 21:00 1.9092019634E+07 -0.0481976
2011-Oct-03 22:00 1.9092016087E+07 0.0462292
2011-Oct-03 23:00 1.9092352484E+07 0.1406692
2011-Oct-04 00:00 1.9093028866E+07 0.2351177
$$EOE
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