From: Pat Thomas <pt50@pearl.mhtc.net>
Date: Saturday, May 09, 1998 12:37 PM
Subject: New Comet Coming This Way
My Dear Friends,
Early on May 4th, several days ago, one of our members that regularly
monitors the SOHO/LASCO images, found an interesting blip on a C3 picture.
I say interesting, because the amount of happenings as of late on the
surface of the sun has been nothing less than incredible. He immediately
recognized this "blip" to be a comet. He immediately notified other
Millennium Group members. We were puzzled because no one else had reported
this comet (that in fact appears to be another behemoth sized comet) coming
in. Why had no one seen it before now? Why had no one seen it as it
streaked toward the sun?
Regardless, there was another very curious thing - there was not a circular
posted by Brian Marsden at CBAT. I must say here that Mr. Marsden is a
brilliant man. There is likely no other man on the face of the earth that
knows more objects or that has the ability that he has to quickly and
efficiently post ephemerdis. But there was no announcement. Where was it?
Surely this crack NASA team from the SOHO project had already reported the
comet.
We made a decision that we must report this comet thru the normal expected
channels. We absolutely knew that we must not go the route that Chuck
Shramek had several months ago with the companion to Hale Bopp. He was
tortured and put thru hell for his decision to go to the comercial radio
personality Art Bell. So we went thru the traditional channel of CBAT. So
we reported early on the 4th, after a brief board meeting. We were not
surprised when the word came back to us that the comet had already been
reported only a few slight hours prior to our report. Surprise! Surprise!
Being the abnormally paranoid individual that I am (especially after the
last couple or three years of scrutiny that I have endured), I had to
wonder why. Of course in the movie Deep Impact there were protrayed the
soup boys, the goons, the FBI or whatever they are calling them these days!
Maybe this heightened my fears! Naw! This comet is coming in fast, no one
reported it earlier, and it is rounding the sun toward the earth.
Hold it a second--- I didn't say it is going to hit the earth. let's get
that strait right here and now. I only am saying that it is heading this
way. Then other questions came to mind; could this be Hale Bopp? It has
been a particularly strange comet changing paths and such. I remember
seeing a picture of a comet in a magazine, from the fifties making a
spaggetti like path around Jupiter before impacting upon it; And then there
was SL9. It was perturbed by Jupiter and it finally circuled around to
cause incredible damage to the planet; And this comet is coming much closer
to the sun relatively speaking; And what if it breaks up?; What if it
encounters one of the other inner planets?; What about the electrical
discharges that may take place?
Many unanswered questions from a curious mind that wonders why the truth
below appears to have been initially squelched. I also wonder how long it
would've taken to publish the below if THE MILLENNIUM GROUP had not pressed
the issue. And BTW, we have already seen a connection electromagnetically
between the comet and the sun. We will post these images on our site in the
next few days and continue to follow this impending story. But maybe the
next few days won't make a difference.
I encourage you to watch the SOHO site and keep your ears open for "the
possibilities". And with one final comment let me drive this point home. I
heard the other day, that this movie - Deep Impact - took (conservatively)
$80 million to produce. Last year, of the at least 14 billion dollar budget
NASA was gifted from "WE THE PEOPLE", only ONLY three million went to the
study of potentially dangerous earth crossing objects. Where do you think
our priorities are? A movie about the very thing that we don't care enough
about to study costing more than reality itself???? It's time to start
caring about each other.
gary d. goodwin
THE MILLENNIUM GROUP
(P.S. just a little warning, the flares from the sun - xrays, u.v., etc,
are so powerful that we are recieving great amounts this emanations daily.
There have been brown outs, and the weather does not appear to be letting
up. In fact the heating in the sea surface temperatures off of South
America, where we say El Nino is coming from, is once again heating up. I
lost my computer for several days due to a powerful power surge that blew
out my power supply. Unplug your computers! Both electricaly and the modem.
(May save you a few dollars.)
CBAT circular posted late:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iauc/06800/06894.html#Item1
Circular No. 6894
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
Mailstop 18, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA 02138,
U.S.A.
IAUSUBS@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or FAX 617-495-7231 (subscriptions)
BMARSDEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or DGREEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU (science)
URL http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html
Phone 617-495-7244/7440/7444 (for emergency use only)
COMET C/1998 J1 (SOHO)
C. St. Cyr, Naval Research Laboratory, on behalf of the SOHO-LASCO
Consortium (cf. IAUC 6685), reports the discovery by S. Stezelberger of a
bright comet in the northwestern corner of the field of view of the C3
coronagraph, some 8 deg from the sun:
1998 UT R.A. (2000) Decl.
May 3.779 2 10.2 +19 35
Preliminary measurements by Stezelberger and St. Cyr, reduced by G. V.
Williams and given on MPEC 1998-J13, show the comet, estimated by St. Cyr
at mag 0 and possibly brighter, continuing to move across the top of the C3
field. There is a fanshaped tail extending antisunward at least to the
edge of the field, and there may be a separate narrow tail extending
roughly along the direction of motion. Computations by the undersigned
show that the observations are represented rather unequivocally by the
following parabolic orbital elements and suggest that the comet might
become observable from the ground, particularly later in the month at solar
elongations favoring the southern hemisphere.
T = 1998 May 8.901 TT Peri. = 107.577
Node = 348.442 2000.0
q = 0.17454 AU Incl. = 55.085
1998 TT R. A. (2000) Decl. Delta r Elong. Phase m1
May 5 2 23.55 +21 24.8 1.190 0.234 7.7 35.4 0.1
6 2 35.00 +22 50.6 1.165 0.211 7.5 38.6 -0.4
7 2 47.69 +24 06.1 1.137 0.191 7.6 44.3 -0.9
8 3 01.57 +25 04.1 1.107 0.178 8.1 52.9 -1.3
9 3 16.29 +25 37.0 1.075 0.175 8.9 63.6 -1.4
10 3 31.27 +25 40.0 1.042 0.180 9.9 74.8 -1.4
11 3 45.90 +25 13.5 1.010 0.194 11.0 84.5 -1.1
12 3 59.81 +24 22.3 0.980 0.215 12.3 91.9 -0.7
13 4 12.86 +23 12.2 0.953 0.239 13.6 96.9 -0.3
14 4 25.07 +21 48.3 0.930 0.266 15.0 100.0 0.1
15 4 36.54 +20 14.3 0.910 0.294 16.6 101.6 0.5
16 4 47.35 +18 33.2 0.892 0.323 18.2 102.2 0.8
17 4 57.60 +16 47.0 0.878 0.352 19.9 101.9 1.2
(C) Copyright 1998 CBAT
1998 May 5 (6894) Brian G. Marsden