New Comet LoveJoy Discovered: Destination Unknown

reverend lovejoy: "... and the Lord said, Whack ye all the serpents which crawl on their bellies and thy town will be a beacon unto others. So you see Lisa, even God himself endorses whacking day."

Now this I can relate to. Can you perform "In A Gadda Da Vida" on the church organ?

Simpsons episode in which Bart discovers the comet. Rev Lovejoy featured heavily.

They're playing with our heads now.

Always thought that fucking episode was sending a message!

LoveJoy, what a name!
Maybe it brings just that!!!!!

Ugh!

Could be messy!

Sounds more like comet Killjoy

we'll be OK, the rock will burn up on entry to the atmosphere and only destroy a god fearing christian's nuclear shelter!

It is written!

please hit earth...please...

let it trash the planet .. kill 1-4 billion .. and we can start over again..

maybe next time we can get it right...

everyone else love`s ned flanders

I'm getting tired of comets now

Maybe my tolerance is building up

Ug shut the fuck up already. Quitt he doom crap about one fucking comet. Wait till the Orbital Elements come out.

> Thank you everyone :) 2007 has been a good year with two lifetime
> astronomy goals finally achieved. The first goal was to see a
> daylight comet and the second to discover a comet - mission
> accomplished!
>
> I use 2 Digital SLR cameras to image the sky, and then process the
> images using IRIS then examine them using the blink technique on a
> computer monitor. After a very intense search effort in 2006 without
> success (one near miss with 2006M4), I had wound back my efforts in
> 2007 (partly because of 2006P1 and partly because of fatigue!). March
> 15 was only the second time this year I had done any searches in the
> morning sky. While downloading images from the camera on March 15 I
> noticed a cometary object at the edge of 16 raw images centred at RA
> 20h57m DEC -51d 18m made between 17h22m and 17h46m UT. Normally, the
> raw unprocessed images show only the brightest objects so I was very
> suprised that this could be an undiscovered comet. At first I though
> it was simply a bright deep sky object, but after processing the the
> intense telltale green hue and generally morphology strongly
> suggested comet. Additionally, when I blinked the processed images
> it showed small but clear motion. Astrometry quickly revealed no
> known object in that location. At this point I was very sure I had
> something :)
>
> The following day there was an agonising wait for cometrise (about
> midnight from my location) and I notified a number of people for
> followup observations. John Drummond being located further east had
> the first opportunity to see the comet. Sure enough John phoned me
> to confirm the existence of the comet around 11pm local time. Its
> the first time I have spoken to John and what a way to introduce
> yourself! Dan green contacted me late on March 16 UT to advise me
> that the comet had been announced, but as per standard procedure the
> comet would not be named until an orbit was calculated and it was
> determined the comet was not an existing named one.
>
> All told I estimate I have examined about 1000 image fields since
> late 2004, which would equate to about 1000 hours (it takes me 10
> minutes to actually examine an image, but there are other time
> consuming tasks like setup/development/identifying suspect objects,
> etc). Unfortunately I don't keep records on time taken and images
> examined.
>
> Rob McNaught informs me that unusually cloudy weather has severly
> hampered coverage of the Siding Springs survey. Additionally, I
> also checked SWAN this morning and the last posted image is February
> 18. Moonlight problably explained why visual observers hadn't got to
> the comet first.
>
> Here are some of my images of the comet (including the discovery set):
>
> [link to www.pbase.com]
>
> Terry
>

it's the blue star!

Cool! Keep up the great work and thanks for posting!

bump

[link to neo.jpl.nasa.gov]

Comet KillJoy spells doom!

WOW it gets closest to earth as possible!

I'm rather sick of comets, myself.

Hey wake up folks and check the orbit simulation!!!!!
April 26 is the date if the simulation is correct.
I am not kidding!

what's going on apr 25-26. it looks right on top of earth eventhough it says 0.445 au?


[link to neo.jpl.nasa.gov]

dil, what is it?

i see apr 25-26 too. just a visual distortion, or what?

if you move the scroll bar on the simulator at the 26th it shows it missing us by quite a bit.

Batten down the hatches!

Would you people learn how to use the fucking orbit simulations. If you could just do this one thing
all your fears would diminish.

OK the view with which the simulation is set when you go there showed a collision.
It's true that it will miss earth by about the distance of the orbit between Mars and arth.

Tho I would say that's fucking close and this time earth will run through its tail obviously.