Comet Set to Share the "Love" This Weekend...

I thought this astronomical event may be of interest to both round earthers and flat earthers.  It's the appearance of the Lovejoy comet, which will enter its brightest phase over the weekend 10th/11th January.  Anybody who can see the constellation Orion can use it as a reference point—to the left of the left knee of the "hunter".



The comet is expected to be bright enough for backyard astronomers and professional sky-gazers alike to see its greenish glow with the naked eye, or using binoculars if the skies are misty.  Comet Lovejoy is about 70 million kilometres from the earth—or nearly half the distance from the earth to the sun.

I have a pretty good telescope, I am going to aim it at the commit and see what I see.  That's for the heads up

Thanks for posting, I'll be watching out for it.

Whats green mean? Oxygen in the comet? Looks purdy.

I thought this astronomical event may be of interest to both round earthers and flat earthers.  It's the appearance of the Lovejoy comet, which will enter its brightest phase over the weekend 10th/11th January.  Anybody who can see the constellation Orion can use it as a reference point—to the left of the left knee of the "hunter".

The comet is expected to be bright enough for backyard astronomers and professional sky-gazers alike to see its greenish glow with the naked eye, or using binoculars if the skies are misty.  Comet Lovejoy is about 70 million kilometres from the earth—or nearly half the distance from the earth to the sun.

The other day I posted a question regarding the universal acceleration and how does it apply to a comet (it is a celestial body). The comet has its own velocity yet is supposed to be accelerating upward.

The real question is how do we see the comet through the Ice Dome(tm)?

Are you aware that you can do ^superscript and _subscript?  It should be ^TM, not (TM).

Well how do you do, look at that. Thank you very much! THE ICE DOME^TM

Looks better already!

The green hue of the coma is caused by diatomic C₂ gas fluorescing.

Happily managed to grab a picture of it last night, sadly I don't have a light pollution filter for my camera yet so the tail was lost in London's light pollution.


C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) by dephelis, on Flickr

very pretty and thank you for the info!

The green hue of the coma is caused by diatomic C₂ gas fluorescing.

Happily managed to grab a picture of it last night, sadly I don't have a light pollution filter for my camera yet so the tail was lost in London's light pollution.


C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) by dephelis, on Flickr

Nice picture!

I saw it Monday night. Got its celestial coordinates from the Sky Safari app on my phone, plugged the RA and Declination into one of the mount's User Objects, slewed to it and it was centered in the eyepiece. Very nice comet.

Nice picture!

I saw it Monday night. Got its celestial coordinates from the Sky Safari app on my phone, plugged the RA and Declination into one of the mount's User Objects, slewed to it and it was centered in the eyepiece. Very nice comet.

Thanks Lemmi and A2O.

Are you saying that it's position was predicted by sky safari and your observation matched the prediction exactly, how about that! 

I saw it on Tuesday night, with binoculars. Tried to get my telescope trained on it but cloud came up before I could get it in my sights. Every night since then has been pissing with rain.

The green hue of the coma is caused by diatomic C₂ gas fluorescing.

Happily managed to grab a picture of it last night, sadly I don't have a light pollution filter for my camera yet so the tail was lost in London's light pollution.

Thanks very much for posting your image dephelis; well captured!  Unfortunately, the entire night sky where I live in south eastern Australia is gonna be covered with a dense layer of rain clouds for the next 4 or 5 days.  Damn.

I dunno at that sort of distance if you could stack an R, G and B filter on your lens and increase the exposure time, at (say) ISO 25,600, to get an IR image—assuming the EOS 650D's sensor IR filter can be disabled.  But I guess you'd need an equatorial mount for that sort of exposure.  It's probably solve the ambient light pollution issue?  I've never had any experience photographing comets myself, so I know very little about astrophotography.  (My favoured medium's primarily B/W 35mm film.)

Thanks very much for posting your image dephelis; well captured!  Unfortunately, the entire night sky where I live in south eastern Australia is gonna be covered with a dense layer of rain clouds for the next 4 or 5 days.  Damn.

I dunno at that sort of distance if you could stack an R, G and B filter on your lens and increase the exposure time, at (say) ISO 25,600, to get an IR image—assuming the EOS 650D's sensor IR filter can be disabled.  But I guess you'd need an equatorial mount for that sort of exposure.  It's probably solve the ambient light pollution issue?  I've never had any experience photographing comets myself, so I know very little about astrophotography.  (My favoured medium's primarily B/W 35mm film.)

Cheers Geoff. I may have another opportunity to catch it tonight, depending on if the gale force winds calm down enough for me to be able to use my scope.

Sadly taking it as an IR-RGB wouldn't help matters terribly as you would still get bleed through from the LP in the red and green channels. Fairly moot as I would have to have the IR filter removed from the 650D first, which I'm not keen on doing!

A friend of mine might be coming over tonight to take advantage of my better horizon, I'll see if I can take a shot or two with his LP clip.

Can't see it for smoke.

Hundreds of firefighters are battling a bushfire which is threatening lives and homes in Bullsbrook, 40km north-east of Perth.

Neighbours have been defending each other's homes as flames fanned by strong winds swept through properties.

There are unconfirmed reports that two houses have been destroyed.

The fire, which has burnt through about 1000ha of bush, has now spread into the Gnangara pine plantation and is burning towards Wanneroo Road.

A huge plume of smoke has spread over the metropolitan area.


I feel for those people, fighting that shit in this weather is not fun!!!

A bloody satellite just came out above the smoke heading for the southern cross. Polar orbit might be a spy sat. Conspiracy stuff here.

sadly its been cloud covered the whole time.

sadly its been cloud covered the whole time.

And which the FEs will undoubtedly seize upon to "disprove" its existence.  If they can't actually see something with their own eyes, then as far as they're concerned, it simply doesn't exist.  This immediately "explains" away man-made satellites, rockets, the ISS, comets, distant stars, gravity, the Coriolis effect, all of the planets, asteroids, etc.  All too easy LOL.

Had a nice clear sky last night and got a good view of it in the telescope, I don't think it's brightened up as much as the pundits predicted it would. I don't have a huge amount of light pollution where I live but I couldn't see it at all with the naked eye, even knowing where it was.

I had my telescope out but just could not find it. Same problem with light pollution. I'm not very good at finding faint objects. Had a fantastic view of Jupiter though!

Quote from: Lemmiwinks on January 10, 2015, 10:27:48 PM

sadly its been cloud covered the whole time.

And which the FEs will undoubtedly seize upon to "disprove" its existence.

It actually doesn't look like the FEers have much interest in this topic at all, but thanks for putting words into our mouths. 

It actually doesn't look like the FEers have much interest in this topic at all, but thanks for putting words into our mouths. 

I have to agree Roundy.  There's invariably a total lack of interest shown by flat earthers in any/all topics that're of a purely scientific nature—or even hint at anything to do with astrophysics, geophysics, or astronomy.  If any flat earth responses are forthcoming, they're usually off-topic one-liners that don't attempt to add anything meaningful to the discussion.

Quote from: Roundy the Truthinessist on January 11, 2015, 10:01:34 AM

It actually doesn't look like the FEers have much interest in this topic at all, but thanks for putting words into our mouths. 

I have to agree Roundy.  There's invariably a total lack of interest shown by flat earthers in any/all topics that're of a purely scientific nature—or even hint at anything to do with astrophysics, geophysics, or astronomy.  If any flat earth responses are forthcoming, they're usually off-topic one-liners that don't attempt to add anything meaningful to the discussion.

Perhaps they were confused.  I for one wasn't aware this was meant to be a debate thread.  Did you accidentally post in the wrong forum?

Perhaps they were confused.  I for one wasn't aware this was meant to be a debate thread.  Did you accidentally post in the wrong forum?

You may need to reacquaint yourself with the forums Roundy.

This one is actually part of the Flat Earth Discussion Boards.  Hope this clarifies it for you and the other FEs.

Quote from: Roundy the Truthinessist on January 11, 2015, 10:15:05 AM

Perhaps they were confused.  I for one wasn't aware this was meant to be a debate thread.  Did you accidentally post in the wrong forum?

You may need to reacquaint yourself with the forums Roundy.

This one is actually part of the Flat Earth Discussion Boards.  Hope this clarifies it for you and the other FEs.

Well, sure, and it seems like there's been a fine discussion going on here.  I (a FEer!) even joined in early on.  But surely you don't expect FEers to just come out of the woodwork to debate with you in every thread that's not in the FE Debate board do you? 

This is an image of comet Lovejoy captured from Australia.  Unfortunately, every night where I live has been buried under a continual layer of rain clouds.



The comet, which was discovered in 2014 by amateur Australian astronomer Terry Lovejoy, comes from the Oort Cloud, a distant halo of icy bodies and frozen debris at the outer edge of the solar system.

It last visited the inner solar system about 11,500 years ago and is not expected to return for another 8000 years.

The coma's green glow is caused by carbon molecules, which are made to fluoresce by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Comets usually have two tails—a dust tail, and an ion tail, but Lovejoy isn't producing enough dust to generate a visible dust tail.

Its long ion gas tail is tinted blue because of fluorescing carbon monoxide ions.  The limited dust which is flowing through the comet's coma and tail reflects sunlight, producing a pale yellowish white glow.

This image of Comet Lovejoy was taken by Australian astrophotographer Phil Hart using an 8-inch telescope equipped with a modified digital camera on a special tracking mount which adjusts for the Earth's rotation.

—And this is the bloke who discovered it in August 2014:

Had a nice clear sky last night and got a good view of it in the telescope, I don't think it's brightened up as much as the pundits predicted it would. I don't have a huge amount of light pollution where I live but I couldn't see it at all with the naked eye, even knowing where it was.

It's naked eye if you are in a "blue" or "light blue" light pollution area, fat chance of that in London. 

Comet Lovejoy is now approximately midway in its visible trajectory.  This is a later image:




I now have a question for the flat earthers:  Assuming for the moment that the map below is an accurate representation of the flat earth (as do 90% of the FEs) could you please superimpose comet Lovejoy's trajectory on an enlarged version of this map map?


Bear in mind that thousands of (amateur) astronomers across the planet have been tracking and recording its path across the skies for at least two weeks now, so by checking the FE's proposed trajectory country by country, it'll be easy to check its correlation (or otherwise) with the RE's recorded trajectory.

PS:  A simple program such as Paint.NET can be used to define the comet's trajectory.