| |
|
Article: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected](Nancy )
Subject: Re: OUR "LADY" OF SCI.ASTRO
Date: 29 Jan 1997 05:20:28 GMT
In article <[email protected]> Paul Gilmartin
wrote:
> Nancy ([email protected]) wrote:
>> You know what you're doing, pointing in the wrong
direction
>> at something you call Hale-Bopp and saying "there,
there's
>> the millennium ..
>
> Huh! This is the first time I've known Nancy to acknowledge
> H-B as a "something". Is it getting so bright that
she can no
> longer find anyone to believe that it's nothing?
> [email protected] (Paul Gilmartin)
The orbit announced by NASA et al is always pointing SOMEWHERE, Paul, and that's what I was referring to as a "something". In 1995 it was pointing to a nova, which faded away. In 1996 folks looked AROUND the point where the orbit was tracking and found either nothing or some unmapped star or during one time around June a real comet for a short period of time that just happened to be nearby. (Remember the IAU gets those comet alerts, and JPL has the NEAT equipment which can spot all kinds of things folks on the sci.astro board don't get to see). Ever wonder why the orbital elements were always jerking around, with what has been reported at times as almost daily changes in the RA and Dec? Dodging from unmapped star to unmapped star.
I remember in early 1996 monitoring the sci.astro.amateur and finding that when the orbit lined up with a star in my Skymap program that amateurs "saw" Hale-Bopp", and when the orbit was tracking across an empty space, they reported they could NOT "see" Hale-Bopp. The Shepherds would get real noisy about what Hale-Bopp supposedly looked like when the orbit lined up with a star, and fall silent when it was tracking across dark spaces, too. David Knisley was in there a lot, however, telling them what they were SUPPOSED to be seeing, but the amateurs were pretty honest anyway with each other, in spite of their Shepherd David's edicts.