Astroblog: Waiting for Comet Elenin

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Waiting for Comet Elenin

Left Panel: Image from the STEREO H2A imager on 9 October showing Earth (bright object with long artefact spikes to the left of Centre), comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková (near centre with visible tail) and Neptune (far right), predicted position of Elenin shown as well. click to embiggen.
Right Panel: Image taken of predicted position of Elenin on 12 October. Image composed of a stack of 4 x 120 second luminance exposures in the Global-Rent-a-Scope GRAS-05 instrument (stacked in ImageJ), tracking on the predicted position of Elenin. Images taken between 20-5 minutes before astronomical twilight, but still lots of interfering Moonlight. No object appears near Elenin's predicted position (image centre), stars down to magnitude 14 visible, the spikes are imager artefacts (click to embiggen).

Well, September 27, when comet C/2010 X1 Elenin, Earth and the Sun were aligned, has come and gone without massive earthquakes (or any earthquakes at all really, there were no quakes of M 6+ around then), the Pacific Ring of Fire did not burst with with volcanic eruptions, andwell, not much of interest happened really. Just like we astronomers predicted.

Now we are waiting for Elenin's closest approach to Earth, on October 16 12:20 UT (that's about 11:20 pm in Australian Eastern daylight saving time. Elenin has been high enough above the morning horizon for scopes to pick up for a couple of days yet, however, bright Moonlight makes picking up dim objects not far above the horizon difficult.

Amateurs have been scanning the sky for any sign of the remnants of Elenin after it's disintegration, but so far no confirmed sightings. A couple of very experienced observers have reported a sighting of an object at magnitude 9-10, but many other experienced observers have found nothing down to much lower limiting magnitudes (see here and here). My images, taken with Global-Rent-a-Scope GRAS-05 instrument above, don't show anything and a magnitude 10 object should have shown up with stacking.

The last reported sighting of Elenin in STEREO was by Comet Al, in images from H2A on October 9. This was at the limit of detection, so this implies the comet remnants are around magnitude 10.5 or 11, pretty dim. My image from the STEREO H2A imager is above. I can't see anything where Elenin should be, but comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušákováand its tail are clearly visible, as is Neptune, so any remnant must be much dimmer than that. You can see an animation showing 45P's tail twisting in the solar wind here (warning 2 meg AVI file).

If comet Elenin hadn't disintegrated, it should have been between magnitude 6.5-7.5 by now, easily visible even under the conditions we have at the moment.

That hasn't stopped the conspiracy people though, after Elenin failed to do anything doomsdayish during it's alignment with the earth and Sun, they have no moved on to worrying about Elenin's "debris field" doing something bad at the time of closest approach. However, the remnants of Elenin will be nowhere near Earth.

So, astronomers will continue to observe , looking for Elenin. As the Moonlight wanes and the comet gets higher above the horizon, we may be able to pick up some of the debris of this comet.

Labels: comet, comets, Global Rent-a-Scope

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:57 am

Comments:

Ian, the final link doesn't seem to work.

My Comet Elenin post has become the most viewed on my blog which is slightly worrying. I've had lots of comments from people who seem to believe the conspiracy stuff including someone implying that they are something to do with elenin.org

# posted by

Stuart : 11:06 pm

Yu55 is the problem not elenin

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:30 am

Okay, Anon, watch as November passes and YU55 does nothing.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:31 am

G'Day Stuart

Fixed the link, thanks for the heads up.

Yes, since I started posting about Elenin my readership has increased almost 10 fold. Which is quite scary. At least my FAQ for the worried is quite popular.

OTOH, since Elenin Doomsday failed to occur on Sept 27-28, my readership has dropped by half.

elenin.org is a conspiracy site, my folks mostly come from the other main conspiracy site godlike productions.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 11:12 am

anon1, anon2 is quite right, YU55 is not a problem at all (well, getting good images will be a problem without a tracking scope, but it's a impact problem)

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 11:15 am

Yes, elenin.org is a conspiracy site. I was surprised that someone claiming to be the maker of it commented on my post. They really need to work out how to turn their caps lock off though ;-)

I'm glad your FAQ is getting some of that traffic.

# posted by

Stuart : 9:00 pm

The comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) is still alive. See the proof :

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive18.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive19.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive20.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive21.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...sitive22x.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive23.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...sitive24u.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive25.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive26.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ositive27.jpg/

Or, see the animated gif :

http://depositfiles.com/files/nd8ujgkxx

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:37 pm

I recently read this article in a Spanish writer ... what he wrote could be true? The anomalies in the orbits of other planets, Saturn's inclination ... Jupiter ... the Moon ... satellites that fall ... Elenin could be a cover for something else more 'big and worrying?
This' link, if you want to read it ...

http://www.diariosigloxxi.com/texto-diario/mostrar/75900/elenin-la-desinformacion

Hello

Francesco

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:53 pm

Francesco, what that author writes isn't rue. See my FAQ for the worried for answers to most of these questions.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 11:25 pm

Thanks Ian, but it 'can and' late? Or trajectory has changed for any reason?

Francesco

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:52 pm

GIF Anonymous. Thanks mate, but I've already reviewed this sequence of images for Francis, it's juts an image artefact.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 12:05 am

Francesco, no the trajectory hasn't changed.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 12:06 am

Ian, the trajectory can not 'have been miscalculated? Or the speed '? Such errors are possible?
Thanks

Francesco

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:12 am

Francesco, The author that wrote the article you referred to also wrote an article 2 days ago about the existence of real zombies.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:53 am

Francesco wrote " the trajectory can not 'have been miscalculated? Or the speed '? Such errors are possible?"

The trajectory has been calculated and the calculations refined from hundreds of observations over many months.

Elenin's observations faithfully tracked the predicted orbit. Even after Elenin had disintegrated into a rubble pile, the patch of debris kept on the predicted orbit for as long as it was visible in the STEREO spacecraft imagers, shortly before its location became visible from Earth bound telescopes again.

While there will be some dynamic evolution of the dissipating rubble pile, it won't so big that it will fail to be seen in the field of view of the instruments I and other have been using.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 1:25 pm

Hello Ian,
Blog of Leonid Elenin but in a user writes that Elenin there 'yet, sighted by a French astronomer and writes that in September by NASA STEREO comet was visible and intact.
What do you think?
Here's the link:
http://spaceobs.org/ru/2011/10/06/comet-elenin-disintegrated/

thanks

Francesco

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:15 am

Francesco:

Yes, as a STEREOHUNTER I'm very aware of Elenin being in STEREO H1A in September, I just haven't posed my own animations yet (and Comet All hasn't posted his on his blog). See also the STEREO image from H2A and its associated animation above.

However:
A) By September it's right at the limit of detection (around magnitude 11-12), consistent with it's slow fade since the disintegration event.
B) The STEREOo instruments have the approximate magnification and field of view of 10x50 binoculars. Even after the breakup the debris patch will still look like a fuzzy blob in STEREO imagers. (compare my images of Elenin in H1B back in Augst with the H2A image of magnitude 10 45P Honda above).

As for the French Astronomer, he's referenced in this very blog post. Along with all the folks who haven't seen it when using better instruments. Even experienced observers can be mistaken when searching for faint objects in light polluted skies.

The latest failure to see the comet in a powerful telescope by experienced observers is here

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 11:09 am