SpaceObs, website run by Leonid Elenin, the most mysterious amateur astronomer that discovered Comet C/2010 X1 or Comet Elenin.
Elenin was visible on STEREO A HI1 from September 6th to the 22nd where it then moves out of the field of view. To see it you need to play the frames very quickly and look for a fast moving barely visible fuzz ball moving on the center of the frame from right to left. So, though we could not see it on SOHO, it was still definitely visible to STEREO A HI1. Since September 23, the comet Elenin may be visible in the field of view of spacecoronagraph C3, installed on the spacecraft SOHO. As comet disintegrated or still disintegrating, there is a strong chance that we did not see anything or see it, but only after post processing of the original images. On images comet will move from left to right, ”under” the Sun. It may be seen as a fuzzy, hardly visible cloud.
Elenin Orbit Diagram (Neo.JPL)
Real facts about comet Elenin
- At this moment the comet disintegrated into a large number of small fragments, which we may be able to see with the large telescope at the early October;
- The fragments of the comet did not change it path and will be flying by orbit of the comet, i.e., not will come to the Earth closer than 35 000 000 km;
- Currently the comet Elenin is not visible on the images from the SOHO and STEREO spacecrafts;
- Comet visible on images from the spacecraft STEREO-B (HI-1 camera) is comet 45P / (Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova);
- Comet Elenin, even if not disintegrated, do not eclipse the Sun, the density of a comet’s gas envelopes (coma) is negligible and earthly observer would not have noticed this event;
- The Earth will not pass through the tail of the comet, because at now it does not exist;
- The comet will not cause and couldn’t do any harm to us and our planet.
This is the statement of Leonid Elenin on his website dated to September 26, 2011.
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