Astronomers try to make comet sense of festive apparition

Scotmans News ^ | Jan 4th, 2005

[raygun]

No, your confusing St. Patty day comets. Christmas comets should be twinkly colored, with red, yellow, blue, green and white patterns. Oh, and Christmas comets are cross shaped too.

[Prospero]

Great photo, indeed! Looks like the Comet Morehouse of, what... 1957? Pretty active outgasing. With such a long period, and perihelion as far out as Earth, this rascal may be a pretty small chuck of the ancient solar system, not nearly as eroded as the short period old reliables.

[TAquinas]

"Oh, and Christmas comets are cross shaped too."

Those cross-shaped comets are very rare. I wonder if any of them has ever appeared on Christmas Day.

Anyway, cross-shaped comets are are actually made up of two comets cris-crossing each other. One would think that the crossing does not last long, but actually at the crossing point they tend to stay in the cross position longer than is expected. Science cannot explain this phenomenon, of course.

Regarding the color(s) of Christmas comets I never heard that some of them could be multicolor, but I doubt it as it implies "multi", which means more than one. For all I know, Christmas comets have always been unicolor, as in unity amongst ONE people, or monoculture. I think I will research the multicolor aspect of comets, but I doubt I will find anything though, since it is God's will to appeal to Christian unity. Hence, mono-colored comets are the norm.

Thanks for sharing your Christian insight and knowledge.

[LTCJ]

I was able to observe it last night with the naked eye after only 2-3 minutes of dark-adapting. Spectacular sky conditions for having hit a high of 73 today.

Worth the effort if the weather conditions permit viewing tonight.

< Sheepish confession > Had several days frustration getting my software to give me a 'skytrack'. Dern thing just wouldn't get above the horizon. Only to realize I was downloading TLEs for another Machholz comet... Dohhhh.

[raygun]

Oh. Right. I got mixed up with the Grail colored and gay comets. While gay comets are multicolored as I described, Christmas comets are predominantly Grail colored with a very distinctive Grail shape.

[SunkenCiv]

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