Comet Elenin is just splitting, not disintegrating!
As many have heard, since the 19th of August, comet Elenin has been described to be disintegrating and will soon completely disappear from view from even the most powerful telescopes and the chances of us ever seeing it with our naked eyes this October will be zero. The thing is though, everyone seems to be ignoring a CME (coronal mass ejection) from the sun that impacted comet Elenin on the 19th of September. This caused comet Elenin to flare up in brightness and then immediately after that, the next day, earth based observations showed that comet Elenin had dramatically dissipated in brightness. From that point on observations revealed that the nucleus of comet Elenin had split into at least two parts. When astronomers see these two events together, dissipation of brightness combined with an elongated nucleus indicative of a splitting, they then assume that a comet is disintegrating and will subsequently lose its volatiles and then it will no longer be able to be seen. And that’s exactly what everyone is proposing at this point in time. Yet, no one has considered that they might be being confused in thinking comet Elenin is disintegrating via not considering the CME of the 19th. That the initial diffusion and fading of the coma as seen since the 19th was simply due to the effects of the CME.
Comet Elenin has definitely split into at least two parts, but in my opinion is not completely disintegrating and losing all of its volatiles. Rather, the CME event of the 19th caused a flare up that depleted the volatiles on the surfaces and now it is taking time for the activity to build up enough to be readily seen again from earth.
Comets sometimes split into a few parts without disintegrating and becoming completely inactive. Comet West is an example of a comet that I can think of off the top of my head that did this in 1976.
It may very well be that this is merely a splitting of the nucleus, nothing more, and if I am correct, come the 23rd of this month when we can get a good view of comet Elenin via SOHO, we may very well see a big beautiful comet sitting there!
To learn more about comet Elenin please visit my website: cometelenin.com
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