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Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly
By Joe Rao
SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
posted: 24 October 2007

A small and very faint comet has surprised observers around the world by overnight becoming bright enough to see with the unaided eye.

Comet Holmes, which was discovered in November 1892 by Edwin Holmes, in London England, was no brighter than magnitude 17 in mid-October—that's about 25,000 times fainter than the faintest star that can normally be seen without any optical aid. In order to view an object this faint, one would need a moderately large telescope.

But the comet's brightness has suddenly rocketed all the way up to 3rd-magnitude, brightening nearly 400,000-times in less than 24-hours! On this astronomers scale, smaller numbers mean brighter objects. From urban locations, a 3rd-magnitude object might be hidden by light pollution, but under rural skies it would be clearly vsiible.

No tail

Comet Holmes is not as dramatic as some, lacking the characteristic tail that makes some of these frozen wanderers so beautiful. Instead, it appears as a fuzzy, albeit distinct, starlike object, but with no noticeable tail.

Bright moonlight can make it hard to find. But with a map and a small telescope, any relatively seasoned amateur should be able to spot it.

The comet is currently located among the stars of the constellation Perseus, which can be found about halfway up in the northeast part of the sky as darkness falls. Perseus is almost directly overhead by around 2 a.m. local daylight time and is still well up in the northwest sky as dawn begins to break.

Why Comet Holmes has undergone such an explosive outburst is not understood. What is amazing is that it made its closest approach to the sun last May, but came no closer than 191 million miles (307 million kilometers) to the sun. The comet is now moving away from the sun and currently is quite far out from Earth at a distance of 151 million miles (243 million kilometers). Not exactly a recipe for the typical show-off comet.

From deep space

This comet is part of Jupiter's "family" of comets—a group in which the far end of their respective orbits (aphelia) cluster around the orbit of Jupiter and takes 6.88 years to make one circuit around the Sun.

So why would a comet far out in the cold of space suddenly brighten hundreds of thousands of times? What is the source of such energy? Does it come from within the comet or without?

Alas, comets remain largely mysterious.

Comet Holmes is not alone in exhibiting anomalous effects. In the past, other comets have undergone unexpected outbursts in brightness. And this is probably not the first outburst for Comet Holmes: when it was discovered in 1892, it was likely in outburst mode, since it became as bright as fourth magnitude and was dimly visible to the naked eye.

"It appears that it is undergoing an outburst that strikingly parallels [a] famous 1892 event," said comet expert John Bortle.

Wednesday afternoon, Bortle said a report coming in from Japan suggested the comet was still brightening.

'Yellowish star'

Viewers all report the comet as appearing star-like, Bortle said, noting that observer Bob King, in Minnesota, said it looked "like a yellowish star."

Because of occasional close approaches to Jupiter, the orbit of Comet Holmes has been altered a few times. In fact the comet was considered "lost" for nearly 60 years before it was finally recovered with a large observatory telescope in 1964.

As to what this object will do in the coming days and weeks is not known. The brilliant light of the waxing Moon will be a hinderance for the rest of this week, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, you might want to try seeing what certainly is one of the solar system's most enigmatic objects.

Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly  (http://www.space.com/spacewatch/071025-comet-holmes.html)

Last night when I got home I looked at the moon and I saw colors of the rainbow in a circle around the moon. The moon was bigger than any other time of the year. To me, this would be considered a sign in the heavens.

It was on the news earlier that the moon is currently closer to the earth than it has ever known to be right. Because of this we can see things in relation to it that we normally would not see.

The moon was still out this morning when I drove to work and I was thinking at the time how big it was and it looked like you could just reach out an touch it.

Hi Brothers & Sisters,
I'm sure you have all read how the Earth will wobble to and fro like a drunken man...
I believe this could be the very thing to bring that about? (the moon)...
Praise Be to God!

Now for the Comet issue...
I've found 3 different Stars, 4 if you count a ball of fire full of the prayers of the saints that are cast to the Earth from Heaven?
The one Star called Wormwood,
another one that destroies a 3rd of the trees on Earth by fire, another that will open the Bottomless pit...
I think their may even be another?....

P.S
Out here in the desert the Stars are so Bright & the Moon very Full!
I sat out back last night, as i usually do and talk to God & our Lord, and seen how Beautiful the moon looked...
Their was an Erie Darkness though...

The best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th

By: Dr. Tony Phillips, Science@NASA
Published: Dec 3, 2007 at 08:37

Mark your calendar: The best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th.

"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time," he advises. "At first you might not see very many meteors-but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky."

The Geminids are not ordinary meteors. While most meteor showers come from comets, Geminids come from an asteroid-a near-Earth object named 3200 Phaethon.

"It's very strange," says Cooke. How does an asteroid make a meteor shower?

Comets do it by evaporating. When a comet flies close to the sun, intense heat vaporizes the comet's "dirty ice" resulting in high-speed jets of comet dust that spew into interplanetary space. When a speck of this comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere traveling ~100,000 mph, it disintegrates in a bright flash of light-a meteor!

Asteroids, on the other hand, don't normally spew dust into space-and therein lies the mystery. Where did Phaethon's meteoroids come from?

One possibility is a collision. Maybe it bumped against another asteroid. A collision could have created a cloud of dust and rock that follows Phaethon around in its orbit. Such collisions, however, are not very likely.

Cooke favors another possibility: "I think 3200 Phaethon used to be a comet."

Exhibit #1 in favor of this idea is Phaethon's orbit: it is highly elliptical, like the orbit of a typical comet, and brings Phaethon extremely close to the sun, twice as close as Mercury itself. Every 1.4 years, Phaethon swoops through the inner solar system where repeated blasts of solar heat could easily reduce a flamboyant comet to the rocky skeleton we see today.

If this scenario is correct, Phaethon-the-comet may have produced many rich streams of dust that spent hundreds or thousands of years drifting toward Earth until the first Geminid meteors appeared during the US Civil War. Since then, Geminids have been a regular shower peaking every year in mid-December.

3200 Phaethon is now catalogued as a "PHA"-a potentially hazardous asteroid whose path misses Earth's orbit by only 2 million miles. It measures 5 km wide, about half the size of the asteroid or comet that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and can be seen through backyard telescopes-in fact, now is a good time to look:

"3200 Phaethon is flying past Earth just a few days before this year's Geminid meteor shower," notes Cooke. On Dec. 10th, Phaethon will be about 11 million miles away shining like a 14th magnitude star in the constellation Virgo: ephemeris. That's too dim for the naked eye, he says, but a good target for amateur telescopes equipped with CCD cameras.

Cooke doesn't expect the flyby to boost the Geminids-"11 million miles is too distant to affect meteor rates"-but the Geminids don't really need boosting. "It's always a great shower," he says. "Don't miss it."

The best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th (http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_71874.shtml)

Asteroid Will Miss, Not Hit Mars This Month
By John Borland EmailJanuary 11, 2008 | 12:36:54 PM

Bad news for disaster voyeurs: The asteroid that was previously believed to have a decent chance of hitting Mars later this month will almost certainly miss the strike zone after all.

As recently as last month, astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Earth Object program (the same folks who are trying to identify space rocks likely to hit us) had said there was at least a 1-in-25 chance of 2007 WD5 smashing into the Martian landscape on Jan. 30.

However, astronomers now have collected more data from four separate observatories, and the updated tracking figures put the chance of impact at just .01 percent, or 1 in 10,000.

Granted, optimists who play the lottery every week might want to keep their eyes trained on the sky. But for the rest of us, that means the true chances of impact are pretty close to nil.

This kind of surging odds, followed by collapsing probability, is typical for such near-miss situations, the JPL researchers say. Every object has a region of uncertainty associated with it, due in part to imprecise measurements. As uncertainty narrows, but a planet (or other impact point) is still within the uncertainty region, the odds of impact climb dramatically.

Finally uncertainty falls to the point where the planet is no longer in the danger zone, and odds collapse. A similar situation happened in early analyses of 99942 Apophis, which was believed in late 2004 to have a 2.9 percent chance of hitting Earth in 2029, but is not now believed to present a danger.

Had the asteroid actually hit the planet, it could have created a crater nearly a kilometer across, and thrown significant dust into the atmosphere. The resulting effects could have helped give scientists new information about conditions on Mars, as well as shed light on what might happen (or might have happened) in the case of a similar collision with Earth.

2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out - Impact Odds now 1 in 10,000 [Near Earth Object program release]

Asteroid Will Miss, Not Hit Mars This Month (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/asteroid-will-m.html)

Astronomers Astonished by Violence of Universe

Friday , January 11, 2008

WASHINGTON —
The deeper astronomers gaze into the cosmos, the more they find it's a bizarre and violent universe.

The research findings from this week's annual meeting of U.S. astronomers range from blue orphaned baby stars to menacing "rogue" black holes that roam our galaxy, devouring any planets unlucky enough to be within their limited reach.

"It's an odd universe we live in," said Vanderbilt University astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann.

She presented her theory on rogue black holes at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas, earlier this week.

It should be noted that she's not worried and you shouldn't be either.

The odds of one of these black holes swallowing up Earth or the sun or wreaking other havoc is somewhere around 1 in 10 quadrillion in any given year.

"This is the glory of the universe," added J. Craig Wheeler, president of the astronomy association. "What is odd and what is normal is changing."

Just five years ago, astronomers were gazing at a few thousand galaxies where stars formed in a bizarre and violent manner.

Now the number of galaxies is in the millions, thanks to more powerful telescopes and supercomputers to crunch the crucial numbers streaming in from space, said Wheeler, a University of Texas astronomer.

Scientists are finding that not only are they improving their understanding of the basic questions of the universe — such as how did it all start and where is it all going — they also keep stumbling upon unexpected, hard-to-explain cosmic quirks and the potential, but comfortably distant, dangers.

Much of what they keep finding plays out like a stellar version of a violent Quentin Tarantino movie.

The violence surrounds and approaches Earth, even though our planet is safe and "in a pretty quiet neighborhood," said Wheeler, author of the book "Cosmic Catastrophes."

One example is an approaching gas cloud discussed at the meeting Friday.

The cloud has a mass 1 million times that of the sun. It is 47 quadrillion miles away. But it's heading toward our Milky Way galaxy at 150 miles per second.

When it hits, there will be fireworks that form new stars and "really light up the neighborhood," said astronomer Jay Lockman at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia.

But don't worry. It will hit a part of the Milky Way far from Earth and the biggest collision will be 40 million years in the future.

The giant cloud has been known for more than 40 years, but only now have scientists realized how fast it's moving.

So fast, Lockman said, that "we can see it sort of plowing up a wave of galactic material in front of it."

When astronomers this week unveiled a giant map of mysterious dark matter in a supercluster of galaxies, they explained that the violence of the cramped-together galaxies is so great that there is now an accepted vocabulary for various types of cosmic brutal behavior.

The gravitational force between the clashing galaxies can cause "slow strangulation," in which crucial gas is gradually removed from the victim galaxy. "Stripping" is a more violent process in which the larger galaxy rips gas from the smaller one.

Then there's "harassment," which is a quick fly-by encounter, said astronomer Meghan Gray of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

Gray's presentation essentially showed the victims of galaxy-on-galaxy violence. She and her colleagues are trying to figure out the how the dirty deeds were done.

In the past few days, scientists have unveiled plenty to ooh and aah over:

• Photos of "blue blobs" that astronomers figure are orphaned baby stars. They're called orphans because they were "born in the middle of nowhere" instead of within gas clouds, said Catholic University of America astronomer Duilia F. de Mello. (Man doesn't understand the power of God.  D.W.)

• A strange quadruplet of four hugging stars, which may eventually help astronomers understand better how stars form.

• A young star surrounded by dust, that may eventually become a planet. It's nicknamed "the moth," because the interaction of star and dust are shaped like one.

• A spiral galaxy with two pairs of arms spinning in opposite directions, like a double pinwheel. It defies what astronomers believe should happen. It is akin to one of those spinning-armed flamingo lawn ornaments, said astronomer Gene Byrd of the University of Alabama.

• The equivalent of post-menopausal stars giving unlikely birth to new planets. Most planets form soon after a sun, but astronomers found two older stars, one at least 400 million years old, with new planets.

"Intellectually and spiritually, if I can use that word with a lower case 's,' it's awe-inspiring," Wheeler said. "It's a great universe."

Astronomers Astonished by Violence of Universe (http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,322254,00.html)

Luke 21:24-26 "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.

Dropped and Lost Cell Calls? Sun Might Be to Blame
New Solar Activity Is Trouble for GPS, Cell Phones & Power Companies
By CLAYTON SANDELL

Jan. 11, 2008 —

Chances are you probably missed last week's appearance of Sunspot No. 10,981 on the surface of the sun.

But scientists say its arrival signals the beginning of a cycle of solar storms that could make everything from your cell phone to the GPS navigation system in your car temporarily stop working. And in severe storms, experts say it's possible entire power grids could be knocked out, leaving millions in the dark.

Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic activity on the sun that appear on roughly an 11-year cycle. The location and characteristics of Sunspot No. 10,981 tell scientists that the newest cycle -- known as Solar Cycle 24 -- has begun. The solar activity can release tremendous blasts of energy toward Earth -- interfering with an array of sensitive electronic systems.

Experts say the periods of solar storm activity should gradually increase, peaking by the year 2011 or 2012.

Dale Gary, a solar physicist who chairs the physics department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, says cell phone towers will likely bear the brunt of a solar storm.

"It can affect quite a number of towers in a given region," said Gary, who notes one study he conducted showed a typical storm could affect about 7 percent of all cell phone calls. A stronger storm could make the problem worse.

Of particular concern, experts say, is the effect solar storms could have on GPS navigation devices that have come into much wider civilian use in the last five years.

The system relies on Earth-orbiting satellites to provide precise locations anywhere on the planet. But solar storms could make GPS receivers unable to lock onto a satellite signal, rendering them useless. The effect could last for minutes or more than a day. You may be reduced to -- gasp -- stopping to ask for directions.

"The civilian use of GPS has really taken off only in the last few years, so we really do expect to see a much wider impact in this upcoming cycle," said Douglas Biesecker, a solar physicist at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sales of so-called personal navigation devices -- those manufactured by companies like Magellan and Garmin, for example -- have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2004, worldwide sales of GPS units were about 2 million. By 2007, that number had jumped to about 27 million, according to technology analysts at ABI Research.

"It's difficult to find a product with similar growth rates," said ABI principal analyst Dominique Bonte. He predicted that by 2011, when the storms are expected to peak, worldwide GPS sales will hit 100 million devices annually.

The impact on GPS units could be especially serious for pilots, farmers and surveyors -- anyone who needs precision accuracy, says Biesecker.

"Imagine if you're laying a highway," he said. "You pave, and then have to rip it up and start it all over again. It's happened."

And scientists say there's not much to be done except wait out the storm with a potentially huge economic impact across industries.

"If you are doing precision GPS, where you need centimeter activity, you basically have to cease operations until the event is over," Gary said.

Another serious impact could be on power transmission lines, which are susceptible to bombardment by electrical interference. A 1989 solar storm, for example, knocked out power to 6 million people in Canada's Quebec Province. Power utilities in New Jersey and other U.S. states were also affected.

Solar storms that hit Earth in the fall of 2003 had wide-ranging impacts, from blackouts in Sweden to the loss of a $640 million science satellite, according to a NOAA report. Airlines also had to reroute flights over high latitudes because of communications blackouts and high levels of radiation exposure -- at a cost of $10,000 to $100,000 per flight, the report said.

Dropped and Lost Cell Calls? Sun Might Be to Blame (http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=4120698)

HMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The first thought that comes to me is Revelations 16:8-9

Revelations 16:8-9 Then the fourth [angel] emptied out his bowl upon the sun, and it was permitted to burn (scorch) humanity with [fierce, glowing] heat (fire). 9 People were severely burned (scorched) by the fiery heat, and they reviled and blasphemed the name of God, Who has control of these plagues, and they did not repent of their sins [felt no regret, contrition, and compunction for their waywardness, refusing to amend their ways] to give Him glory.

Hello DreamWeaver,

Brother Bob, I remember quite a few hard times with police communications that were caused by sun spots and solar storms. Our communication system was not state of the art, but it was a pretty rugged system designed to always work. Activity on the sun can effect all communication systems, including the most expensive state of the art systems. Nobody has any control over the sun's thermostat except GOD. Solar activity has the potential to disrupt a huge variety of modern devices. This obviously includes a variety of devices used for emergency services and defense, not to mention the devices used for entertainment.

Hollering and drum beating were used at one time for communications over distances, and solar storms could put us back in these times. There are many methods of shielding types of electronic equipment from certain types of harm. However, the forces of the sun are much more powerful than any shield methods we have. We communicate fairly well most of the time, but the sun could end that at any time. In fact, the sun has the power to permanently damage many kinds of electronic equipment. Mankind just has a tiny understanding of the forces of nature. This should be humbling for mankind, and mankind should know that the forces of nature will never be mastered or even understood. In case someone is wondering, the forces of nature belong to GOD alone, and only GOD can control them. The forces and balances between the forces are so intricate and complicated that it would be impossible for them to be by coincidence. Even a tiny model made by man would be impossible. The best that mankind can do is GUESS about the AWESOME MIGHT AND POWER OF ALMIGHTY GOD in HIS CREATION. The sun is just a tiny example of the dramatic effects that are possible with just slight changes. ALMIGHTY GOD hung the planets in place and established their forces like they were tiny trinkets. I must add that our solar system is so tiny that it would be like a grain of sand on a beach when compared to the universe ALMIGHTY GOD CREATED. We serve an AWESOME AND ALL POWERFUL ALMIGHTY GOD!

Love In Christ,
Tom

2 Peter 3:3-13 NASB
Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

2,000-foot asteroid to buzz Earth
At 334,000 miles, space rock's flyby to pass at 1.4 times distance between planet, Moon

An asteroid up to 2,000ft (600m) long will skim past the Earth during rush hour on Tuesday morning in a close encounter unlikely to be matched for two decades.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 will be only 334,000 miles (540,000km) away at its closest point to the Earth, about 1.4 times the distance between the planet and the Moon.

“This will be the closest approach by a known asteroid of this size or larger until 2027,” said Don Yeomans, of Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Programme Office.

“There is no reason for concern. On the contrary, Mother Nature is providing us an excellent opportunity to perform scientific observations.”

Amateur astronomers are expected to train their telescopes towards the asteroid and should, weather permitting, see it. It should be visible through telescopes of 7.6cm (3in) or more as a bright moving dot.