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