Sydney Star Gazers

Comet Elenin has broken up into pieces and unfortunately what this means is that Elenin will not be putting on a show for us at all…..as we predicted several months ago.  Since the nucleus of the comet is not intact , comet elenin no longer has a tail.

The pieces of comet Elenin are still following the expected orbit and will pass Earth in just over 2 weeks time at a distance 91 times further away from us than the Moon is. What this means is that depending on the sizes of the fragments, we may or may not be able to see Elenin using high power telescopes.

In 7 days the remains of comet elenin will be in a position high enough above the horizon for us to try and take our next pictures of what ever remains of the comet. We suspect that the remains of the comet will not be large enough for us to see from Earth telescopes…..but we will find out in a week from now.

Edit : If anything remains of comet Elenin we will not see it until at least October 11

Posted in Notes

The latest news from Chandra suggests that there are 2 black holes in the NGC 3393 galaxy.

We took an image from Chandra and processed it and came up with what we suspect may be the black holes in the central region of the galaxy.

From our image below right it looks like there is a larger blackhole with a smaller one beneath it. This is of course is our interpretation of the image below left.

Posted in Notes

A number of videos have been appearing on youtube from someone in New Zealand claiming that what he is showing in the sky is comet elenin or even Nibiru on different days.

Of course this is not the case. The videos shown of this “object” have one thing in common……. they are taken as the Sun is beginning to set below the horizon.

In each video we have seen of this object, it turns out to be nothing more than a high altitude jet flying over this guys house. There is a vapor trail leading out from behind the jet which is normal for a jet which is flying away from the observer.

The sun which is about to set below the horizon is at a position where it is  low enough… and where the jet is high enough….for the underside of the vapor trails to be lit by the setting sun.

This is not comet Elenin or even the non-existant Nibiru……. it is nothing more than a jet.

Below we have a picture on the left showing a screenshot of “supposed elenin/Nibiru” from the video and on the right we have the vapor trails stretching out from a jet. The only difference between the 2 pictures is the direction the jets are travelling in each picture and the effect of the high altitude winds on the vapor trail.

Posted in Notes

Michael Mattiazzo took a picture of comet elenin yesterday which we looked at today. The picture shows further proof that comet Elenin has broken up into pieces as a result of the effect of the sun’s gravity and heat on it.

Comet Elenin should almost be a 6th magnitude comet at this stage, meaning that it should be almost visible to the naked eye. Instead however, Elenin is now reported to be a 10th magnitude comet which is now a faint smudge in the sky using telescopes.

Radio astronomers have also reported that the radio signals they bounced off the comet show that elenin has no water which indicates a comet breakup.

We processed the picture taken by Michael Mattiazzo to remove some of the background noise but as you can see there is very little left of comet elenin. The comet is in the lower center of the picture. We expect that there will be nothing to see of the comet after the next week or two.

Posted in Notes

This is a view of today’s Moon

(Click to Enlarge)

Posted in Views of the Universe

This is a nice shot we took today of the Pleiades…. in the picture you can see the dust cloud that the Pleiades is currently passing through.

Posted in Notes

We were able to take this picture of comet 213p Van Ness which is 180.7 million km away from Earth.

This is an interesting comet as it’s orbit around the sun keeps it at a distance from the sun beyond the range of Mars.

Posted in Notes

Below is the latest image of comet elenin…….

Posted in Notes

Leonid Elenin

We have been getting a lot of emails from people telling us that comet elenin has not broken up because they have seen recent pictures of it.

Unfortunately we cannot keep on answering the same question again and again to convince people that the comet has indeed broken up.

Instead we would like to refer people to Leonid Elenin’s new post on his blog where he talks more about how the comet is breaking up and the opportunity it gives us to study the comet.

Note in his post where he states the following:

On images from Sept. 1st in the comet’s coma there was no condensation visible, and that meant the comet had already broken up into fairly small pieces, with a maximum size of not more than a hundred meters.

Such a breakup of small comets passing near the Sun is not rare, and in that is nothing surprising. I note that this is a breakup, not an explosion. All the pieces continue to move on the comet’s trajectory. The large fragments are likely to continue to disintegrate into smaller ones. It is possible that in October when the comet moves into the morning sky, we will no longer be able to see what once was Comet Elenin. 

This is exactly what we are seeing in recent pictures.

http://spaceobs.org/en/2011/09/03/comet-elenin-the-final-prospect/

Posted in Notes

The Juno probe was launched almost a month ago and it is already 9.5 million km away from Earth.

However before it gets to Jupiter it will circle back to us and swing by the Earth in October 2013 using what is called a gravitational slingshot to give it the speed it needs in order to catch up with Jupiter.

Juno took these picture below of Earth and our moon from a distance of 9.5 million km.

Juno will establish an order over Jupiter in July 2016.

Posted in Notes

Leonid Elenin

On his site, Leonid Elenin has left some comments where he confirms that comet elenin has indeed broken up and that the debris of the comet will not be a danger to the Earth as it will be too far out.

Leonid tells us that the breakup of Elenin is similar to the breakup of  comet C/1999 S4.

C/1999 S4 is a comet which broke up in July 2000.

Leonid Elenin will make an announcment on what is happening with Comet Elenin on his site soon.

http://spaceobs.org/en/

Posted in Notes

We located an earlier image of comet Elenin from  and we have processed the image to highlight what we believe is the initial breakup of Elenin a week ago.

The three white specks in our picture are what we believe to have been the initial broken pieces of Elenin’s nucleus a week ago. If our image is correct, this means that Elenin’s nucleus broke up initially into 3 pieces. Since then it appears those pieces have broken up into smaller pieces.

We are still analyzing this picture further to confirm it shows the breakup.

Posted in Notes

When we mentioned a few months ago that comet elenin was likely to be a disappointing comet, we did not know how true that was going to be.

It has now been confirmed that comet elenin is disintegrating and the pictures coming from astronomers are showing just that.

In the last 12 days, Elenin is reported to have faded by as much as 80% and the latest findings show that Elenin is seen only as a smear and there is no sign of central condensation.

When we talk about a comet’s degree of condensation , we look at either the degree of condensation of the coma (atmosphere) or the degree of condensation of the nucleus.

In this case ,we are talking about comet Elenin having no central condensation, in other words of the nucleus…… and this roughly means there is no longer a nucleus to comet Elenin.

This has been measured by an E12 instrument which is used to gauge the level of condensation of a comet.

Our next post will talk about why a comet that has been travelling the solar system for at least 11,000 years suddenly breaks up.

As for the conspiracies created for this comet, we guess they will will have to find something else to worry about. Perhaps that is now why the title of Planet-X has been given to a comet due in 2013.

The picture below shows the twelve days in the destruction of comet Elenin. In each of the 12 images, comet Elenin is the black shape in the center of the image.

The Death of Comet Elenin Part 1

Posted in Notes

It has been a little over a week since reports first came out that comet elenin was fading ,,,, and in the last week the comet has continued to fade.

It is possible that comet Elenin’s nucleus may have started breaking up. This is backed up by an observing report from a few days ago where the  comet nucleus had spread into “a dim, elongated diffuse smudge.”

Latest picture do seem to indicate that a breakup is possibly underway.

Posted in Notes

We took a great picture of the Orion Nebula today and have processed it to highlight some of it’s details

Orion Nebula 27th August

Posted in Images through my Telescope

The latest picture of comet elenin is taken while the comet is still too low to the horizon so we are not seeing a great picture of it.

The image in the top left of the picture below shows what the comet looks like. We processed the main picture to try and bring out some of the comets details.

Posted in Notes

Well it is looking like our prediction that comet Elenin will be a disappointment  is looking to be true .

The picture below was taken by Rob Kaufman of Victoria and shows Elenin 19th August on the left and then for the 23rd on the right. As you can see, Elenin has faded dramatically since the 19th.

As Rob stated, it looks like comet Elenin is now running out of steam.

And Michael Matizzo has stated the following:

Find below my visual observation of comet Elenin tonight August 20, 2011
I hope I am wrong but the comet appears distinctly fainter, by half a
magnitude, and more diffuse than last nights observation.
Can anyone else confirm this?
If this is true, then it is unlikely the comet will survive perihelion.

C/2010 X1 Elenin
2011 Aug 20.39 UT: m1=8.6, Dia.=3′, DC=3…25x100mm B…Michael Mattiazzo
(Castlemaine, Victoria)
[Tycho 2 VT comparison stars. 17 degrees altitude]
ICQ format
Aug 20.39, 8.6, 3′ (M.Mattiazzo, Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, 25x100mm
Binoculars);

Posted in Notes

This is our picture of M22 taken today. This globular cluster contains over 100,000 stars

We processed the picture to bring out some of the different colors of M22.

Posted in Views of the Universe