by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
16 January 2011
One of the members of our research team is an astronomer at a large observatory.
We've been having a number of exchanges about the theories of James McCanney. Unfortunately, I can't find any really good videos of McCanney talking about his ideas. I did find the following which are basically just audio with minimal graphics.
They do explain his ideas so have a
listen before you continue on.
McCanney cites all the strange weather on earth, strange behavior of the sun, that arrived in tandem with Comet Hale-Bopp. So now along comes Comet Elenin. Let's start with the likely trajectory.
On the image, which came from my astronomer
friend, it looks like this:
Elenin
So far it looks
harmless:
SpeedN-NM Comet Elenin (C/2010 X1) appears as a tiny, faint smudge in this stack of four 240-second exposures taken on the morning of December 10, 2010, with a remote-controlled telescope in New Mexico. (The quadrupled stars are due to the comet's motion between exposures.)
It is called Elenin since it was discovered by Leonid Elenin.
I expect the internet to soon be ringing with rumors and news bytes about this comet. For now, there isn't much to say so I'm sharing what I've received in private from an astronomer at a big observatory that shall remain anonymous for the moment.
He says:
For comparison a picture with some of the known comets:
comet comparison
Where to look:
Interview with the discoverer:
("Comets may represent a serious danger")
Elenin's telescope
In the image, Astronomical Insider has included the position of the asteroid belt as a big circle. He has also noted the position of the member of that belt, Schiela, which is the asteroid that began to develop a comet-like coma back in December. The blue ellipse is an approximation of the southern Taurid meteor stream.
Something may change, of course, when the comet crosses the asteroid belt in March/April.
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