It Is Time to Focus on Comets

[AlienSun]

My intent here on DI is to provide content that is rarely seen here or elsewhere and goes far beyond the simple thought, "Yes, UFOs are alien craft."  As if that affirmation solves the problem.  Most people literally avoid stepping beyond that affirmative position, as if that settles the issue rather than opens up a whole, (literally) new world of thinking.  That cognitive dissonance inspired non-approach becomes clear when my submissions gain few responses.  What has kept me going so far is the simple number of click-ons to the material.  Maybe some readers are gone in seconds, snorting as they go.  Maybe some go away thinking.... 

There is more material about comets that can be provided.  I shall continue to do so to the best of my limited abilities.

[AlienSun]

Deny Ignorance

 Biela's Comet



The public may believe that when a new comet appears that every telescope in the world is swung around to behold the new arrival and check it out.  That is far from the actual situation.  Telescope-use time throughout the world is blocked out for in years in advance and assigned to specific individuals and projects far in advance of the appearance of the unannounced visitors.  Scant few of those slots can be vacated to scrutinize a fresh comet.  The truth is, most astronomers are specialists, and few specialize in comets or, actually, ANY object within the solar system.  Most astronomers study deep space phenomena.  There are some instruments devoted solely to cometary studies, but their users may be looking for specific nuances about comet compositions, or tail activity and nary a thought is given to reconsidering the acceptance of the conventional theory.

Reports of a continuing swarm of nuclei within a coma are rare.  This rarity is not because such things happen infrequently and should not happen at all to a strong-bodied comet, but because most comets do not approach close enough for such scrutiny.  If as much interest was directed toward each comet to appear, as are done to the near-approaching comets, it seems likely that such a concentrated effort would produce many more exceptional reports about what otherwise are deemed as ordinary comets.  Better still, the term "ordinary comets" probably would have to be redefined to include multi-nuclei comets, and thus, drastic revisions of the theory would be required.

All in all, there are about 20 comets that have been observed over the last couple of centuries to be multiple.  But there are earlier reports.  Most come from the works of the ancient historians.  Seneca, writing from the records of Ephorus, an early Greek historian, wrote that the Comet of 370BC separated into two parts, each moving in a different direction.  That would be a most remarkable sight to behold of a naked-eye comet. 

An examination of the early accounts also brought to light the Comet of 813.  "'A comet appeared which resembled two moons joined together: they separated, and after taking different forms resembled at last a man without a head.'"   (We must consider that the reporter of this tale took liberties in interpretating the data!)  However, the basic information about the separation of the two bodies seems reasonable enough. 

One of the most intriguing of the early comet reports is taken from Chinese records.  The early Chinese kept very accurate and detailed records of comet appearances. Perhaps further research motivated by our thrust of inquiry will disclose even more details than can be provided now in the following account.  A modern astronomical writer recently wrote: "Chinese records proved a wealth of detail about multiple comets, but one of the most remarkable accounts is about the three comets which supposedly joined (his emphasis) together in 896."

The appearances of multiple comets were noticed long before the invention of telescopes.  This means that they were close enough to be viewed with the unaided eye, such as the multiple appearances of Halley's Comet's return in 1077.  None of the modern-day comets are so bold as to split before the naked eyes of observers or to move off in different directions.  Perhaps that is because they do not approach as close as formerly.

The 17th-century astronomer and thinker Johann Kepler observed a double comet.  About the Comet of 1618, he wrote: "When first seen it was a nebulous object, but some weeks afterwards it appeared to consist of a group of several small nebulosities."  While Kepler used a telescope, its resolving power was far from excellent, so this comet too must have been very close to Earth.

A modern comet that supposedly separated into pieces is Biela's Comet.  Its case is deeply ingrained in every astronomer's mind and book as the perfect example of a comet splitting asunder.  It was more than that.  It was the first hard evidence to the whole of astronomy that comets behave unusually.  However, the members of the field ignored and continue to ignore most of the telling data that went along with the event.  The story of Biela's Comet is still relevant today because a full disclosure of its data is extremely revealing to our case when examined in the light of the cometship theory.

The comet is thought to have been first discovered in 1772, but its orbital determinants were not well-defined at that apparition, and it was lost.  Found anew at a return in 1805, it was not until 1826 that the orbit of a comet--thought to be the same as 1772 and 1805--was firmly established and thereafter called Biela's Comet after the Austrian Army officer who discovered it at that appearance.

The orbit was found to have a period of about 6.62 years.  It was visible for eighteen weeks at the 1832 return.  At that time, it came fairly close to Earth, crossing our orbital path 50 million miles in advance of the planet.  The 1839 return was not favorable for good observations, as they say.  In fact, the comet was missed altogether.

In several years of searching for and reading books and articles on comets, I have come across mention of Biela's Comet innumerable times.  Most accounts are short and repetitive.  But in a book entitled Comets by Charles P. Olivier, (published at the turn of the century) I found explicit details about the comet's return in 1845-6 that have been ignored by all other writers.  Olivier takes his material directly from the personal notes of Lt. Mathew F. Maury, the first director of the (then new) Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.  (The notes were published in a slightly more expanded form in The Monthly Notices of the British Royal Astronomical Society.)

At the 1845-6 apparition, the comet was first seen by Di Vico at Rome on November 26, 1845.  Several other telescopes across the world were soon cranked around to center on the suspected coordinates of the incoming comet.  The first sign of unusual activity was noticed by the English astronomer Hind on December 19[sup]th[/sup].  He saw, "…Towards the north of the nucleus, what appeared to be a kind of protuberance."

According to later-published reports, two astronomers at Yale Observatory, Bradley and Herrick, were the first to notice the comet as double on December 29[sup]th[/sup].  They saw a faint nebulous spot preceding the main body by a small distance.  However, that observation went unreported at the time.  The first public report of the comet as double was from Lt. Maury.  Maury noticed the companion comet on January 13[sup]th[/sup].  By then, the distance between the two had considerably increased. 

To maintain the credibility of Maury's report, I quote directly from Olivier's use of his notes.

"January 13.  Maury discovered a '…nebulous-looking object altogether cometary in its appearance, preceding Biela's Comet by nine or ten seconds in the lower field (of view).  (A second equals about 2-3 degrees).

"January 14.  …Glimpses of a tail to each body; (about parallel).

"January 18.  Tail of Biela only a few minutes of arc long, extending to N.E. like a lacet;  (others ' not so long.)  Nuclei decidedly condensed towards the center, but not resolvable into points of light except perhaps Biela's by glimpses

"January 23.  Companion has the appearance of two tails, one nearly parallel to Biela's, the other reaching over to his nucleus or rather just to the south of it.

"January 28.  Biela exhibited a pointed nucleus; caught glimpses of a point of condensed light in nucleus of companion.

"February 4.  A decided stellar nucleus to each comet appeared like a sharp point of light.  Tails reaching almost across the field and nearly parallel.

'February 12.  Glimpses of two nuclei in Biela.  Tail of companion nearly parallel…glimpses of another tail extending toward Biela…in a sort of arch.  Appearance of two tails to Biela, the second going off in a direction opposite to the companion.

“February 21.  Ragged condensation of light in nucleus of Biela…tails parallel.

"February 22.  A band of nebulous matter, a little arched, joins the two.  Appearance of a double nucleus about Biela.  Has three tails radiating at angles of 120 degrees to each other.

“February 26.  Biela has a tripod tail…the one extending opposite to the companion, very distinct.  Confused appearance about the nucleus of Biela as though there were several nuclei.

"March 5.  Companion has no apparent nucleus, is exceedingly faint, and without any mark of condensation.

"March 8.  One of Biela's tails points directly east--the other remains as it was.

"March 10.  No stellar nucleus to either comet.  No tail to Biela by the moonlight.

"March 14.  Appearance of cometary fragments about Biela.  Counted five in this position (please ignore periods used for placement):
                                                                  *
                                                               *   *
*   *

"March 17.  Companion is a very diffuse mass of exceedingly faint nebulous matter.  No appearance of fragments about Biela.

"March 21.  Companion very faint, muddy; a shining point in a dim patch of light about its nucleus.

"March 30.  Saw two tails to Biela as formerly.  Companion not seen.'"

By April 22, neither comet was seen; their orbits had progressed too far from Earth.

The famous 19th-century astronomer M. D’Arrest prepared a table of the distances between the two nuclei at 9-, 10-, and 11-day intervals.  It indicated that while the distance between the nuclei was increasing during the early days--drastically so as presently shall be seen--the situation reversed itself sometime after February 12[sup]th[/sup].  Part of these changes, a very small part, can be attributed to the fact of the two having slightly different orbits.  But no other astronomers offered detailed explanations for the unexpected motions or appearances of the two components. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                     [sup]  [/sup]                                                                                                                                                                                                                   [sup]  [/sup]                                                                               

The Biela case is not as mysterious as Halley's.  But enough information has been garnered to enable the pieces to be put together with the proper perspective.  The first clue comes with the independent report of Hind that the nucleus was suffering from a protuberance, a bulge.  Ten days later, the Yale astronomers saw the comet as double.  The secondary nucleus preceded the primary by a small distance; evidently, the separation had just taken place a short time before.  When Maury first noticed the secondary on January 13[sup]th[/sup], it was about 177,000 miles from the other.  Except for noticing the doubleness, Maury noted nothing unusual.

Five days later, January 18[sup]th[/sup], the comas had thickened and Biela's tail had lengthened.  By January 23[sup]rd[/sup], the companion had two tails. --Do not necessarily think "tails" when the word is used by Maury.  One of the tails he reported was of the conventional type, however, material escaping from the coma and moving away by the action of solar effects upon it.

The other "tail" is mysterious.  It completely defies the ability of the natural theory to offer any form of legitimate explanation for its being.  How can this tail be explained to reach over to just south of Biela, cutting across the distance between the two comets rather than just being blown away by the solar wind, like the other, normal tail?

Consider that some of Maury’s tails to be a trails left by vehicles moving from one cometship to another across the solar effects.  (Similar-type connections were found in the drawings of Halley's Comet's return of 1910.)  For DI, I have deleted a detailed explanation for what seems to have happened with these two, controlled bodies, it became a wordy bore.  You can trust that intelligent actions were involved beyond the whims of pure nature.  

On February 12[sup]th[/sup], Maury found a lot to see, two nuclei in Biela, two tails in Biela, and two in the companion.  One tail of each comet can be attributed as the natural effects of the solar forces.  However, the "tail" arched toward Biela is again a trail, the effects of the recent passage of a vehicle from one to the other.  Only this time, additional clues are found to tell much of what happened.

The arch toward Biela did not extend the whole distance.  This is indicative that a vehicle left the companion, its mass gravitationally dragging some of the coma away with it.  The fact of a second body having been in Biela's coma substantiates the contention that there was a vehicle, and it did travel to Biela.

The second, unnaturally, placed tail about Biela is explained by D'Arrest's table.  For almost a month the comets had been separating.  After that date the distance began to close.  The tail noticed to happen on Biela at that time perhaps was the thrust of an ion engine canceling the differences between the two motions.  As the table indicates, enough power was applied to reverse the relative separation of the two.

Having deduced these events for the time of February 12[sup]th[/sup], let us refer back to the January 23[sup]rd[/sup] date.  Earlier, the arch had gone almost from comet to comet.  But not quite.  Maury reported the arch reached just south of Biela's nucleus.  Did an earlier vehicle crossing miss the destination?   Properly not.  It went from Biela to the companion, only more time had lapsed before Maury noticed it than with the other arch.  The key here is the placement of the trails.  These trails were arched and not straight lines because of two factors which worked against that being the case. 

While the ferrying vehicles can be quite swift, they cannot move across about 180,000 miles instantaneously.  It takes some measure of time.  It is likely that the distance would be traversed in the shortest way, a straight line relative to their moving positions and thus curved-appearing from our perspective of their motions.  As mentioned, the luminous trails left by the crossing vehicles were probably materials dragged away from the comas of the comets by gravitational and/or field effects of the craft.  The material would be lost all along the trek to the other body similarly as a comet loses material into its natural tail.  Except when the material carried away by the depart craft was depleted, the trail would grow thin and end.

The fact that the arch of January 23[sup]rd[/sup] lagged behind where it should have been in relation to Biela's nucleus means that end was laid down first.  At the time the ferry started leaving the trail, it was adjunct to the nucleus.  When Maury saw the trail, sometime after it had been laid in its entirety, Biela had moved a small but normal amount along its way.  The trail, susceptible to the effects of solar repulsion and the relative motion of the bodies, was pushed away and gained the appearance of having "missed" the nucleus.

On February 22[sup]nd[/sup], another luminous arch joined the comets, and Biela again had a double nucleus and three tails.  Two tails were ion engine thrust tails and one was normal.  Yet another vehicle had gone to Biela and power was being applied once again in double force to take Biela toward the companion.

.  On February 26[sup]th[/sup], Maury began to suspect several nuclei in Biela.  This is evidence that these bodies had arrived at the main coma earlier, before the March 14[sup]th[/sup] showing.  Such would account for the vehicle trails to Biela. 

Early March was fairly uneventful according to available information. But on March 14[sup]th[/sup], the sky and coma were clear enough for Maury to see five, neatly arranged nuclei.  After that date, little activity took place except the thrust tail from Biela was again reported later in the month.  We may assume that the scout craft were stowed away and preparations were being made to leave the inner solar system.

I apologize for having led you on a tedious, perhaps boring, recounting of the events surrounding Biela's return of 1845-6.  (Provided in more boring detail elsewhere.)  Hopefully, you are beginning to learn more than you wanted to know about the nitty-gritty details of comet activities.  Methods of unnatural power are being employed and displayed.  Therefore, it is necessary to make our own interpretations of actions we learn about if we want to understand these highly mysterious objects. 

If at any point you can even consider that comets are alien spacecraft—but not necessarily accept my argument, that is a starting point.  You have shown a willingness to forgo cultural, social, and dogmatic scientific restraints to look for the real truth, and my torturous words have not been in vain.

[AlienSun]

Deny Ignorance

 Biela's Comet



The public may believe that when a new comet appears that every telescope in the world is swung around to behold the new arrival and check it out.  That is far from the actual situation.  Telescope-use time throughout the world is blocked out for in years in advance and assigned to specific individuals and projects far in advance of the appearance of the unannounced visitors.  Scant few of those slots can be vacated to scrutinize a fresh comet.  The truth is, most astronomers are specialists, and few specialize in comets or, actually, ANY object within the solar system.  Most astronomers study deep space phenomena.  There are some instruments devoted solely to cometary studies, but their users may be looking for specific nuances about comet compositions, or tail activity and nary a thought is given to reconsidering the acceptance of the conventional theory.

Reports of a continuing swarm of nuclei within a coma are rare.  This rarity is not because such things happen infrequently and should not happen at all to a strong-bodied comet, but because most comets do not approach close enough for such scrutiny.  If as much interest was directed toward each comet to appear, as are done to the near-approaching comets, it seems likely that such a concentrated effort would produce many more exceptional reports about what otherwise are deemed as ordinary comets.  Better still, the term "ordinary comets" probably would have to be redefined to include multi-nuclei comets, and thus, drastic revisions of the theory would be required.

All in all, there are about 20 comets that have been observed over the last couple of centuries to be multiple.  But there are earlier reports.  Most come from the works of the ancient historians.  Seneca, writing from the records of Ephorus, an early Greek historian, wrote that the Comet of 370BC separated into two parts, each moving in a different direction.  That would be a most remarkable sight to behold of a naked-eye comet. 

An examination of the early accounts also brought to light the Comet of 813.  "'A comet appeared which resembled two moons joined together: they separated, and after taking different forms resembled at last a man without a head.'"   (We must consider that the reporter of this tale took liberties in interpretating the data!)  However, the basic information about the separation of the two bodies seems reasonable enough. 

One of the most intriguing of the early comet reports is taken from Chinese records.  The early Chinese kept very accurate and detailed records of comet appearances. Perhaps further research motivated by our thrust of inquiry will disclose even more details than can be provided now in the following account.  A modern astronomical writer recently wrote: "Chinese records proved a wealth of detail about multiple comets, but one of the most remarkable accounts is about the three comets which supposedly joined (his emphasis) together in 896."

The appearances of multiple comets were noticed long before the invention of telescopes.  This means that they were close enough to be viewed with the unaided eye, such as the multiple appearances of Halley's Comet's return in 1077.  None of the modern-day comets are so bold as to split before the naked eyes of observers or to move off in different directions.  Perhaps that is because they do not approach as close as formerly.

The 17th-century astronomer and thinker Johann Kepler observed a double comet.  About the Comet of 1618, he wrote: "When first seen it was a nebulous object, but some weeks afterwards it appeared to consist of a group of several small nebulosities."  While Kepler used a telescope, its resolving power was far from excellent, so this comet too must have been very close to Earth.

A modern comet that supposedly separated into pieces is Biela's Comet.  Its case is deeply ingrained in every astronomer's mind and book as the perfect example of a comet splitting asunder.  It was more than that.  It was the first hard evidence to the whole of astronomy that comets behave unusually.  However, the members of the field ignored and continue to ignore most of the telling data that went along with the event.  The story of Biela's Comet is still relevant today because a full disclosure of its data is extremely revealing to our case when examined in the light of the cometship theory.

The comet is thought to have been first discovered in 1772, but its orbital determinants were not well-defined at that apparition, and it was lost.  Found anew at a return in 1805, it was not until 1826 that the orbit of a comet--thought to be the same as 1772 and 1805--was firmly established and thereafter called Biela's Comet after the Austrian Army officer who discovered it at that appearance.

The orbit was found to have a period of about 6.62 years.  It was visible for eighteen weeks at the 1832 return.  At that time, it came fairly close to Earth, crossing our orbital path 50 million miles in advance of the planet.  The 1839 return was not favorable for good observations, as they say.  In fact, the comet was missed altogether.

In several years of searching for and reading books and articles on comets, I have come across mention of Biela's Comet innumerable times.  Most accounts are short and repetitive.  But in a book entitled Comets by Charles P. Olivier, (published at the turn of the century) I found explicit details about the comet's return in 1845-6 that have been ignored by all other writers.  Olivier takes his material directly from the personal notes of Lt. Mathew F. Maury, the first director of the (then new) Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.  (The notes were published in a slightly more expanded form in The Monthly Notices of the British Royal Astronomical Society.)

At the 1845-6 apparition, the comet was first seen by Di Vico at Rome on November 26, 1845.  Several other telescopes across the world were soon cranked around to center on the suspected coordinates of the incoming comet.  The first sign of unusual activity was noticed by the English astronomer Hind on December 19[sup]th[/sup].  He saw, "…Towards the north of the nucleus, what appeared to be a kind of protuberance."

According to later-published reports, two astronomers at Yale Observatory, Bradley and Herrick, were the first to notice the comet as double on December 29[sup]th[/sup].  They saw a faint nebulous spot preceding the main body by a small distance.  However, that observation went unreported at the time.  The first public report of the comet as double was from Lt. Maury.  Maury noticed the companion comet on January 13[sup]th[/sup].  By then, the distance between the two had considerably increased. 

To maintain the credibility of Maury's report, I quote directly from Olivier's use of his notes.

"January 13.  Maury discovered a '…nebulous-looking object altogether cometary in its appearance, preceding Biela's Comet by nine or ten seconds in the lower field (of view).  (A second equals about 2-3 degrees).

"January 14.  …Glimpses of a tail to each body; (about parallel).

"January 18.  Tail of Biela only a few minutes of arc long, extending to N.E. like a lacet;  (others ' not so long.)  Nuclei decidedly condensed towards the center, but not resolvable into points of light except perhaps Biela's by glimpses

"January 23.  Companion has the appearance of two tails, one nearly parallel to Biela's, the other reaching over to his nucleus or rather just to the south of it.

"January 28.  Biela exhibited a pointed nucleus; caught glimpses of a point of condensed light in nucleus of companion.

"February 4.  A decided stellar nucleus to each comet appeared like a sharp point of light.  Tails reaching almost across the field and nearly parallel.

'February 12.  Glimpses of two nuclei in Biela.  Tail of companion nearly parallel…glimpses of another tail extending toward Biela…in a sort of arch.  Appearance of two tails to Biela, the second going off in a direction opposite to the companion.

“February 21.  Ragged condensation of light in nucleus of Biela…tails parallel.

"February 22.  A band of nebulous matter, a little arched, joins the two.  Appearance of a double nucleus about Biela.  Has three tails radiating at angles of 120 degrees to each other.

“February 26.  Biela has a tripod tail…the one extending opposite to the companion, very distinct.  Confused appearance about the nucleus of Biela as though there were several nuclei.

"March 5.  Companion has no apparent nucleus, is exceedingly faint, and without any mark of condensation.

"March 8.  One of Biela's tails points directly east--the other remains as it was.

"March 10.  No stellar nucleus to either comet.  No tail to Biela by the moonlight.

"March 14.  Appearance of cometary fragments about Biela.  Counted five in this position (please ignore periods used for placement):
                                                                  *
                                                               *   *
*   *

"March 17.  Companion is a very diffuse mass of exceedingly faint nebulous matter.  No appearance of fragments about Biela.

"March 21.  Companion very faint, muddy; a shining point in a dim patch of light about its nucleus.

"March 30.  Saw two tails to Biela as formerly.  Companion not seen.'"

By April 22, neither comet was seen; their orbits had progressed too far from Earth.

The famous 19th-century astronomer M. D’Arrest prepared a table of the distances between the two nuclei at 9-, 10-, and 11-day intervals.  It indicated that while the distance between the nuclei was increasing during the early days--drastically so as presently shall be seen--the situation reversed itself sometime after February 12[sup]th[/sup].  Part of these changes, a very small part, can be attributed to the fact of the two having slightly different orbits.  But no other astronomers offered detailed explanations for the unexpected motions or appearances of the two components. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                     [sup]  [/sup]                                                                                                                                                                                                                   [sup]  [/sup]                                                                               

The Biela case is not as mysterious as Halley's.  But enough information has been garnered to enable the pieces to be put together with the proper perspective.  The first clue comes with the independent report of Hind that the nucleus was suffering from a protuberance, a bulge.  Ten days later, the Yale astronomers saw the comet as double.  The secondary nucleus preceded the primary by a small distance; evidently, the separation had just taken place a short time before.  When Maury first noticed the secondary on January 13[sup]th[/sup], it was about 177,000 miles from the other.  Except for noticing the doubleness, Maury noted nothing unusual.

Five days later, January 18[sup]th[/sup], the comas had thickened and Biela's tail had lengthened.  By January 23[sup]rd[/sup], the companion had two tails. --Do not necessarily think "tails" when the word is used by Maury.  One of the tails he reported was of the conventional type, however, material escaping from the coma and moving away by the action of solar effects upon it.

The other "tail" is mysterious.  It completely defies the ability of the natural theory to offer any form of legitimate explanation for its being.  How can this tail be explained to reach over to just south of Biela, cutting across the distance between the two comets rather than just being blown away by the solar wind, like the other, normal tail?

Consider that some of Maury’s tails to be a trails left by vehicles moving from one cometship to another across the solar effects.  (Similar-type connections were found in the drawings of Halley's Comet's return of 1910.)  For DI, I have deleted a detailed explanation for what seems to have happened with these two, controlled bodies, it became a wordy bore.  You can trust that intelligent actions were involved beyond the whims of pure nature.  

On February 12[sup]th[/sup], Maury found a lot to see, two nuclei in Biela, two tails in Biela, and two in the companion.  One tail of each comet can be attributed as the natural effects of the solar forces.  However, the "tail" arched toward Biela is again a trail, the effects of the recent passage of a vehicle from one to the other.  Only this time, additional clues are found to tell much of what happened.

The arch toward Biela did not extend the whole distance.  This is indicative that a vehicle left the companion, its mass gravitationally dragging some of the coma away with it.  The fact of a second body having been in Biela's coma substantiates the contention that there was a vehicle, and it did travel to Biela.

The second, unnaturally, placed tail about Biela is explained by D'Arrest's table.  For almost a month the comets had been separating.  After that date the distance began to close.  The tail noticed to happen on Biela at that time perhaps was the thrust of an ion engine canceling the differences between the two motions.  As the table indicates, enough power was applied to reverse the relative separation of the two.

Having deduced these events for the time of February 12[sup]th[/sup], let us refer back to the January 23[sup]rd[/sup] date.  Earlier, the arch had gone almost from comet to comet.  But not quite.  Maury reported the arch reached just south of Biela's nucleus.  Did an earlier vehicle crossing miss the destination?   Properly not.  It went from Biela to the companion, only more time had lapsed before Maury noticed it than with the other arch.  The key here is the placement of the trails.  These trails were arched and not straight lines because of two factors which worked against that being the case. 

While the ferrying vehicles can be quite swift, they cannot move across about 180,000 miles instantaneously.  It takes some measure of time.  It is likely that the distance would be traversed in the shortest way, a straight line relative to their moving positions and thus curved-appearing from our perspective of their motions.  As mentioned, the luminous trails left by the crossing vehicles were probably materials dragged away from the comas of the comets by gravitational and/or field effects of the craft.  The material would be lost all along the trek to the other body similarly as a comet loses material into its natural tail.  Except when the material carried away by the depart craft was depleted, the trail would grow thin and end.

The fact that the arch of January 23[sup]rd[/sup] lagged behind where it should have been in relation to Biela's nucleus means that end was laid down first.  At the time the ferry started leaving the trail, it was adjunct to the nucleus.  When Maury saw the trail, sometime after it had been laid in its entirety, Biela had moved a small but normal amount along its way.  The trail, susceptible to the effects of solar repulsion and the relative motion of the bodies, was pushed away and gained the appearance of having "missed" the nucleus.

On February 22[sup]nd[/sup], another luminous arch joined the comets, and Biela again had a double nucleus and three tails.  Two tails were ion engine thrust tails and one was normal.  Yet another vehicle had gone to Biela and power was being applied once again in double force to take Biela toward the companion.

.  On February 26[sup]th[/sup], Maury began to suspect several nuclei in Biela.  This is evidence that these bodies had arrived at the main coma earlier, before the March 14[sup]th[/sup] showing.  Such would account for the vehicle trails to Biela. 

Early March was fairly uneventful according to available information. But on March 14[sup]th[/sup], the sky and coma were clear enough for Maury to see five, neatly arranged nuclei.  After that date, little activity took place except the thrust tail from Biela was again reported later in the month.  We may assume that the scout craft were stowed away and preparations were being made to leave the inner solar system.

I apologize for having led you on a tedious, perhaps boring, recounting of the events surrounding Biela's return of 1845-6.  (Provided in more boring detail elsewhere.)  Hopefully, you are beginning to learn more than you wanted to know about the nitty-gritty details of comet activities.  Methods of unnatural power are being employed and displayed.  Therefore, it is necessary to make our own interpretations of actions we learn about if we want to understand these highly mysterious objects. 

If at any point you can even consider that comets are alien spacecraft—but not necessarily accept my argument, that is a starting point.  You have shown a willingness to forgo cultural, social, and dogmatic scientific restraints to look for the real truth, and my torturous words have not been in vain.

[AlienSun]

Chapter 7

The Comet of 1881 III
(Put on DI 10:20am 5/10/2024 or so I assumed.  I see that it doesn’t show? So here it is again.
I have a dwindling short-term memory. Almost all of my material on comets dates back at least fifty years to a book I had intended to finish before Halley's last appearance in 1986.)

Morris K. Jessop, author of the classic UFO book of the mid-fifties The Case for the UFOs, called the period between 1879 and 1889 "The Incredible Decade."  He used that phrase because of the rich UFO-type of material he found in the scientific journals of that day.  Jessop devoted several pages to comets and UFOs in connection with comets.  He failed, unfortunately, to grasp the importance of his own reporting.  He failed to make a direct association between the two phenomena or to dwell on the matter. 

Jessop was a professionally trained physicist.  Sadly, he evidently believed that comets were much as he had been taught, natural objects.  Ufology was fairly simple in those days.  It was supposed that UFOs came from another planet via a rather uncomplicated process.  And many ufologists believed in that era that UFOs had first arrived here in 1947 with the Arnold sighting over Mount Rainier or perhaps shortly before as the "foo fighters" of World War II days.  The tone of the times when Jessop wrote his book was not ready to allow the unthinkable, heresy sort of things contained in this work or modern ufology.  Jessop was merely a product of his times, if somewhat advanced from the general crowd.  Had his life not met an untimely in end as an apparent suicide, perhaps he would have written a similar, but far more comprehensive work than this about UFOs and comets.

John Keel, in his book Operation Trojan Horse, also listed the 1880s as years of inexplicable UFO activity.  More specific than Jessop, he listed a peak period of 1879-1883 and another in 1887.

Both Jessop and Keep included some of the activities reported in and around comets in that period as UFO sightings.  The UFO-comet association each made, however, is probably more accurately viewed as an association due to circumstance and nothing more.  In other words, strange and mysterious phenomena from anywhere were thrown together to better flesh out their arguments.  I suspect, however, that they would have wished the comets out of the stories to better focus on the UFOs of that era, but that would have subtracted from the available data they had to draw upon.  So the antics of the comets where included were not given as connective links in any fashion, but as
other unusual phenomena of the time or merely as the locale of the activity. 

Certainly, the comet data for that era are extraordinary in themselves.  As a result, the two phenomena automatically link up according to our perspective as being indicative of the whole picture of what was happening in the latter nineteenth century and continues to this day.

We must remember that the industrial/scientific era was coming into flower in the latter 1800s.  Science was becoming master of all, and the growing numbers of scientists were unabashedly outspoken about what they knew, thought (and most important to our discussion) saw.  The unspoken rules of behavior for their new class were not yet standardized nor nearly as ingrained as today.  At that time, they were not so much in competition with one another that each utterance was carefully monitored before it was made and then more thoroughly checked again by their peers after it was said.  They were, by and large, ignorant in many ways of the Universe, and they were not afraid to let that lack of sophistication and knowledge show.  That innocence, so rarely seen today, was to dwindle away in the decades following the beginning of the new century.  I doubt that few readers today can imagine such a time as having existed.  But it did exist in this field and other fields at that epoch.  For proof go to a library and delve into the old scientific publications and books of that era. 

Most of the following material was printed in the most respected scientific journals of that day.  The data were reported by astronomers both adept amateurs and professionals.  Their honesty, preserved for us in very readable form is refreshing.

On May 22, 1881, the astronomer Tebbutt was working the night sky from the observatory in Windsor, N.S. Wales, Australia.  He discovered an object situated just below the constellation Columbia.  For his find, the comet became know as Tebbutt's Comet (1881b)  (Later, the "b" designation was changed to "III" after the comet proved to be the third new comet reaching perihelion that year.)

One account gives that the comet was found as a naked-eye, hazy object.  Through a telescope, the haze gave way to show three objects, two “stars” and a head of a comet.  Later details about the comet indicated that the so-called stars were unknown objects accompanying the comets and not stars at all. 

The comet advanced toward the Sun.  While determining the position of the comet on June 10th, an amateur astronomer, Dr. W. Bone, was measuring its distance, as was commonly done, from a nearby star. 

"…Whilst measuring the position of the comets, he said, "I noticed a particular discordance in each succeeding measure, and at length found that the star from which I was measuring, was a rapidly moving body….

"On more careful inspection I found it was somewhat discoid but its light although bright, was diffused and hazy."  Dr. Bone estimated the object's brightness at about 2.5 magnitude.

Another amateur, Dr. Gold at Melbourne, saw the nucleus "split in two" at about that time.  And in Cordoba, Argentina, a Dr. Gould noticed the companion "star" on June 10[sup]th[/sup] also.  He wrote, "The comet was seen…with a star which I have not yet been able to identify."  Dr. Gould believed the star to be "…as bright as the second magnitude.  On attempting to identify the star I found it in none of the catalogues.  On the next evening, I scrutinized the region without finding any visible star."

In addition to the three men's observations supporting one another in general detail, the fact that the brightness estimates were within of .5 magnitude of each other is also a supportive correlation of what they saw.

The comet, know also as the Great Southern Comet, eventually moved to become visible in the northern sky.  Wilson and Stone of the Cincinnati Observatory made a series of interesting sketches of the comet detailing a separation of the nucleus into two parts on July 6[sup]th[/sup]. 

Professor Stone wrote: "The nucleus and envelopes at times seemed to flash up."  A red, sunward jet was noted, but a thick, dark line separated it from the nucleus, confounding the observers and leaving them not knowing what to think about what they were witnessing.

According to The Sidereal Messenger, Volume 1, using the date supplied by Stone and Wilson, it reported, "The comet was about thirty-seven millions of miles from the Earth at this time, (July 6[sup]th[/sup]): if so, a second of arc, in linear value, would be about 1,000 miles.  Then imagine the nucleus of a comet…suddenly rent into two parts and violently thrust asunder from each, from 6,000 to 10,000 miles in one hour of time, and you have a display of celestial fireworks passing all human comprehension."

Amen, we can say to that.  And to much more of a degree than the author of those words could have ever imagined.  Nothing natural could have supplied such an impetus to those bodies as to acquire such a rate and distance of separation in such a short time.  Nothing.

The high rate of separation of the "fragments" of a split comet is not a new phenomenon in cometary astronomy.  It is strikingly witnessed quite frequently even it is poorly supported by natural physics.  But what of the "moving stars" notice before the "breakup?"  Astronomers would have to explain them as probably as pre-separation fragments or perhaps as some sort of phenomena completely unconnected with the comet--.  Or they could be labeled as previously undiscovered asteroids that merely happened to be captured--according to perspective--in the same narrow view as the comet.  Actually, the most obvious and frequently used explanation by professional astronomers to account for anomalous objects and behaviors is to dismiss them as being reported by amateurs regardless of the credibility of the amateur. 

Our outlook allows us to take the meager bits of evidence and put them to work into a sequence of events which fits the cometship mold without asking undue faith from the reader:  The comet was discovered on May 22[sup]nd[/sup] with two UFOs already away and moving toward Earth. Eighteen days later additional UFOs (or perhaps the same ones) were noted near the comet, perspectively, at least, and moving at such a rate of speed as to be readily discernible even when totally unexpected and unwarranted for natural bodies.   Comets are at such a distance from Earth than discernable movements are extremely unlikely.  But such is quite what we would expect for highly advanced technological craft moving in the freedom of deep space at tremendous velocities.        Eventually the UFOs reached Earth.  We are allowed to make that further assertion by acknowledging the following report given by one of the more prominent astronomers of that time.

From the same volume of The Sidereal Messenger comes the account of a strange appearance of "double meteors" as noted by the trusted astronomer Lewis Swift on the nights of July 23 and on August 16[sup]th[/sup] of that year.  "(They)…passed somewhat slowly across the field of (the telescope).  The pair was moving side by side with equal velocity.  Neither appeared to be in advance  of the other.

"On August 16, of the same year (in the same area of the sky)," he added, " I saw another pair moving in the same direction, with in every particular way, save one, resembled the other: the exception being that there was a faint though easily seen luminous filament of uniform size and brilliancy extending from the one to the other, resembling probably (though on a smaller scale) the luminous bridge Maury saw between the twin comets of Biela, only in the former case, the band was straight, while in the latter case it was curved."  (He was wrong about that.  Maury reported a curved trail.)

At the close of his account Swift admitted that in 22 years of viewing the heavens he had never seen anything quite like the two sets of objects.  Swift called the objects "meteors."  The reader should not be misled into accepting that he did indeed glimpse two remarkable pairs of meteors within a short span of time.  Swift was bound by the constraints of his profession, and that was the only explanation his science would allow for the sighting of bright, moving (albeit slowly) objects in the sky in those days.  What else could he have called them in those days before flying machines, satellites, and space debris?

Why did the astronomers of last century report these unusual and singular events and objects so eagerly and we hear nothing about such similar activities witnessed today by the scientists?  Especially since observers, amateur and professional are more numerous and the equipment is superior?  The answer lays in the prevailing attitude today.  The limit of acceptable data today has been narrowed and further narrowed to exclude unexpected data because they will not compliment the accepted theory.;  Any data without "ample" verification and without "substantial" reason for being are viewed as nuisance data, things to be ignored, because they are guaranteed to fall out of on-going works where rigid statistical analyses or even graphic profiles are utilized.  Such information simply does not get conveyed down the line if it does not fit into nice, neat and pre-established parameters.  Peer pressure and peer reviews (when such data is prepared for publication) is the kiss of death for maverick data.  Individual cases may be discussed with other colleagues in private and perhaps printed informally in letter columns of some of the less rigid scientific publications, but such information never gets put into a legitimate framework of acceptance and study.  The situation is compounded in this age by the fact that the stigma of having reported a UFO may be hung upon any scientist reporting anything unusually different such that it could garner that label.  As with airline and military pilots, few want that distinction or mark on their records.  It is the kiss of death for what may be an otherwise sterling career.

Fred Whipple gave us some insight into his particular views in that area.  He frankly expressed his feelings during the 1974 proceedings of a colloquium held by NASA.  Speaking with other scientists about a short-lived feature of unknown or origin which had been photographed in the tail of Comet Kohoutek, Whipple stood up and interjected this point: "…In tens of thousands of (comet photograph) plates inspections I have found so many false images that I have a built in suspicion of peculiarly shaped images that move for a short duration."

"          …So many false images…that move for a short duration."  Clearly, it made no difference to this man what the photographic plates had captured.  His mind was already closed to anything other than what he wanted to believe. We can only wonder about how much of his work alone could have helped advance and prove the cometship theory if he had not chosen to deliberately exclude such troublesome data as meaningless? 

While Whipple spoke those words and we can point an accusatory finger in his direction, he is no more to blame than any of his fellows whom felt exactly the same way, but sat silently for the same reasons.  And, too, the possibility must be allowed that Whipple, a pre-eminent figure in the field that he was, was part of a conspiracy that knew about cometships, and thus, he had an ulterior motive for raising and making such a warning statement before his peers at a NASA-sponsored meeting.  But consider, as it was with UFO sightings, no scientist was going to risk his/her university chair or federal funding to reveal what they saw and knew.  They had already been schooled (and probably well funded.)

[AlienSun]

The Comet of 1882II


The most sensational of all comets was not Hale-Bopp of 1997, nor Halley's Comet returns of this century.  The distinction goes to a comet that appeared last century, in 1882.  Officially called 1882II, it is better known in the literature as the Great Comet of 1882. 

It had several unusual distinctions that set it apart from most other comets.  First, the comet moved quite near to the Earth, making it easily observed as a naked-eye object by one and all.  Like its sister comet of the year before (1881II), it was discovered in the southern sky looming suddenly as a large, close object.  It was first observed from New Zealand, September 3, 1882.  In four days, it became so conspicuous as to be visible at noonday near the Sun. That makes it brighter than any comet we have seen since.

On September 17[sup]th[/sup], the comet's motion carried it across the face of the Sun as viewed from our position.  While the eyes of the interested astronomers were glued to their eyepieces (darkened with smoked glass), no trace of its body was visible silhouetted against the solar disc.  Robert S. Richardson, astronomer and author, gave the following account of the passage he found in writings from that time.
"The puzzling thing about the transit was the extraordinarily large difference between the predicted time of ingress (when the comet would move in front of the sun) and the observed time.  1882II had been well observed, so that its orbit and motion were accurately known.  Yet according to this ingress, it should already have been a third of the way to the center of the disk.  Now, when theory and observation disagree, the observations are always assumed to be right.  It would appear, therefore, that the orbit was not as accurate as had been supposed and should be differentially corrected to bring prediction and observation into agreement--were it not for the fact that observations made  twenty hours later at another observatory showed 1882II right on schedule!"

At one point, the orbit was found to be parabolic after perihelion, although observations taken before that time did not agree.  One account said that the comet did not curve at all as it moved up to the Sun, but approached in virtually a straight line.  Richard Proctor, a professional astronomer of that time, predicted from his computations that the comet would return in less than half a year, but it has not been seen since.

Another set of figures yielded 480 days as another ridiculously short period.  Other computations gave 3115 days (8.5 years), up to 4070 years for the predicted return.  A recent “official” catalogue gives 758 years as the period.  None of these orbits, of course, jibe with observations of the comet moving in toward the Sun and the exiting of it from invisibility after an unexpected delay.

The editors of two scientific publications of the time lamented about the lack of a decently acceptable period for the comet.  The Sidereal Messenger editor chided astronomers for not having come forth with "a period certainty after six months of exact observations and computations."

Volume 44 of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society of England tells in a round-about way that the movement of the comet was not consistent to its earlier motions.  The fault, they seemed to think, lay with the astronomers, not the comet.  "We are disappointed, for no orbit has heretofore been published which completely satisfies the observations, especially those made after the middle of October or thereabouts."

Richardson's earlier comments about the mystery of the orbit are nicely phrased to indicate the problems with the orbit, but he failed to point the finger of blame at either the comet or the observers.  Of course, in the orbital books of today, the problem has been nicely solved.  Somebody has taken a look at some or even all of the available old data, drawn their own parameters about what the comets should have done as a natural object, and tossed out positions that did not agree.  That, unfortunately, is the way science works.  He also failed to include a lot of other mysteries about the comet.

On September 30, 1882, 27 days after discovery, the object began the first of its notorious changes in front of the sun ten days earlier.  It was seen as a double.  On the next day, October 1, the two components were connected by a "line of light," as one observer described the appearance.

L. A. Eddy, an  Englishman observing from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, recorded his impressions for October 4[sup]th[/sup].  "They resembled two grains of rice placed end to end."  Also on that day, another observer remarked that preceding the head were two “wings or areas of nebulous-looking light.”

By October 5[sup]th[/sup], E. E. Barnard of Vanderbilt University and Prof. Wilson in Cincinnati observed the nucleus separating into three fragments.

Then, Oct. 6, "…Seemed to be four in a row."

Oct. 8, ”…the appearance within the elongated coma was of three bodies again.”

Oct. 13, "…Bright points in nucleus of one's appendage."

Oct. 15, some reports describe triple bodies again, connected by luminous matter.  Observers using larger instruments found “…five shining beads on a string,” as the situation was explained by one observer. 

Oct. 21, "…six bodies."

Oct. 23, four nuclei noticed by several astronomers.

Oct. 30, "…'a' component not seen."

Nov. 2, "…six bodies."  Somebody else reported "four."

Nov. 8, "…Two, equally double."

Nov. 10, "…Five, twinkling."

Nov. 14, reports from the observatories say "…still five."

Nov. 24, "…Two."

Dec. 4, "…Three."

Dec.9, no nuclei visible, the coma was cloudy.  The comet was getting further    

Jan. 27, "…Five points  of light seen.”

Jan. 30, again (or still) reports of five nuclei.

Feb. 24, "…Five, maybe six."

The so-called breaking up of the nucleus, with its inconsistent showing of parts, was not the only activity happening with the comet.  These additional activities can help explain the discordant reports about the number of nuclei being visible from night to night.  The astronomer Schmidt, at his instrument in Athens, observed a nebulous body alongside the comet's head on October 8[sup]th[/sup], 9[sup]th[/sup], and 11[sup]th[/sup].  The American astronomer Brooks, in New York, reported seeing a companion comet on the other side of the main body on October 21[sup]st[/sup] and 22[sup]nd[/sup].  It was not visible on the 23[sup]rd,[/sup] he said.

The most amazing report of this kind was made by the famous American astronomer E. E. Barnard on October 14[sup]th[/sup].  It is one of the most bizarre observations ever reported--from an astronomer's standpoint.  And for that reason, rather than simply for the humor of it, the observation is respected but rather unkindly referred to as "Barnard's Blizzard."  His report follows:

"While sweeping to the south of the comet, I picked up l large,-+ distinct cometary mass, fully 15 seconds in diameter.  A similar object but less bright was seen close beside this, their edges touching--apparently a double comet--and on the opposite side from the first object was a third fainter mass, the three almost in line east and west.  The third object is distant from the first about half of its own diameter.  A slight displacement of the telescope toward the south-east revealed a number more of these wonderful objects, one was very elongated in form.  There were at least, six or eight of these objects near one another within about 6 degrees south by west of the large comet's head.  Their appearance was that of distant telescopic comets with very slightly brighter centers and so near (to each other) that several were in the field at once."

In a later report, Barnard wrote, "…There must have been 10 to 15 comets at this point within the space of a few degrees."  He attempted to have the sightings verified, as is the case with any new comet, by sending a telegram of the positions of the bodies to Prof. Swift, in Rochester, New York, the person to whom all new comet discoveries in this country were to be reported.  But Barnard's message was ignored.  He added, "…The observations were amply verified, however, both in this country and in Europe by other observers who saw some of these bodies."

But the bodies did not persist, they were all gone by the next night.  Barnard, it should be mentioned, had excellent eyesight.  He was one of the best and most diligent astronomers in this country.  He was to prove this fact time and time again over the years by discovering several new comets.

Morris K. Jessop in his book (mentioned earlier) wrote that Schmidt, in Athens, saw some of Barnard's elusive companions "…moving both with the comet and at right angles to it."

Those are the scant, pertinent details of the comet. What are we Earthling larvae to think?  The affair seems too complex to attempt an analysis, and we have progressed past the point of that step being necessary.  We can accept on faith that the comet was mysterious in several areas.  What can we say about the actual comet?  It "broke" into pieces? . The several resulting nuclei (of the main comet) did not spread out at all as conventional theory would have it, but they remained in single file or groups as their numbers mysteriously varied.  And why did they all have uniquely shaped and/or similarly sized comas?  What about the mysterious companion comets that Barnard spied?  They evidently came and went rapidly, moving absolutely contrary to what they "should" have done as natural objects which, on a natural body, would have slowly drifted away, being visible until observers got tired of following them.  --Meanwhile, back on Earth, strange things were happening in the normally quiet skies of those days.

During the time of the comet's naked-eye visibility and between the time the bodies in the main coma diminished from five on November 14[sup]th[/sup] down to the two reported on November 24[sup]th[/sup], a most spectacular event occurred down here on the surface.  The event concerns what was to become known as Maunder's Object.  Any astronomer worth his salt will instantly recognize that nickname, but will not attribute any significance to the affair because it falls outside conventional acceptability for such phenomena. 

E. W. Maunder was a member of the Royal Observatory staff at Greenwich, England.  On the early evening of Friday, November 17, 1882, a little after 6 o'clock, Maunder was outside checking the weather when his attention was drawn to a startling sight.

He said, "A great circular disc of greenish light suddenly appeared low down in the East NE, as though it had just risen, and moved across the sky, as smoothly and steadily as the planets.  The circularity of its shape when first seen was evidently merely the effect of foreshortening, for as it moved it lengthened out, and when it crossed the meridian and passed just above the Moon, its form was that almost of a very elongated ellipse, and various observers spoke of it as 'cigar-shaped,' 'like a torpedo,' or 'a spindle' or 'shuttle.'"

At a retirement speech several years after the turn of the century, Maunder recounted the details of the sighting, adding that he considered this his most striking experience in his 43 years as an observing astronomer.

The astronomical publication Observatory was to report that there were 26 reports of the mysterious object, all but five coming from England.  One of the witnesses on the Continent was Nobel Laureate-to-be Seeman, the famous spectroscopist of that era.

Reports about this object and other mysterious events were to fill the incoming mail trays at the Monthly Notices and other publications.  On November 7[sup]th[/sup], from York, England, an observer saw what appeared to be bars of light shooting across the sky, taking a minute or so.  He wrote, "There seemed to be a dark something before the bright bar, which showed the path it would take, also a dark streak where it passed."

Of Maunder's Object, another witness wrote, "It stole through the sky like a long, luminous, and nebulous 'cigar ship….'  The ends were, I think, slightly tapering and hazy: the sides pretty well defined."

Yet another reported:  "Well-defined spindle-shaped object."  He admitted being an utter loss to explain it. (The repeated usage of the terms "spindle" and "shuttle" refers to tools of the weavers' trade.  Such items were commonly known to most people in 1882.  Also in those times, cigars were not as squared off at the ends as they are today.  They were more tapered.)

From the various positions of the observers and the angles at which they saw the object, determinations were made as to its altitude and speed.  The former was established to be 133 miles high.  It was found to move at a probable speed of 10 miles per second.  That translates into 36,000 miles per hour.  The body took about 75 seconds to travel from horizon to horizon.

We know now, firsthand, that the altitude of 133 miles high in 1882 is barely above the reaches of our atmosphere.  That is the range within which we orbit many of our manned space shots.  It is an area too high for any sort of atmospheric or aurora display.  Scientists of 1882 did not know the limits of the atmosphere at that time, and despite the reckoned altitude of 133 miles, they assumed that the object was most likely an auroral cloud or something similar effect of a rarely seen act of nature.

In the 1968 Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, commonly called the Condon Report, the case of Maunder's Object was examined.  It was used with several other examples of mysterious things which people, even professional people, often saw in the sky, and therefore, the implication was, none of which should be taken too seriously simply because they were so mysterious.  –Is that dogmatic scientific deductive logic ingrained within the system?  Carl Sagan had been hired to work with that group. 

The reviewing scientists for that section of the report, R. V. Jones, opted to pass off the sighting by more or less by agreeing with the guess of the 1882 scientists and ignoring the evidence of the speed, altitude, and sharply defined shape of the object:  He concluded, "…It is noteworthy that there was an intense magnetic storm at the time coinciding with one of the largest sunspots ever recorded.  It is therefore likely that Maunder's object was an unusual feature of an auroral display.“ 

How many of us lay individuals would suggest that just perhaps there was a connection between the mechanics of the sunspots, Maunder’s object, and the mysterious time abnormality of the comet taking too long to pass unseen across the sun’s face in those several days?

In over a century since the incident, nothing has been found to support the explanation so easily offered by Mr. Jones.  Quite the contrary, modern knowledge makes such an assessment far more unlikely than ever.  Auroral displays are rather mysterious even today and quite nice to gaze upon, but there is no evidence obtained in the last hundred years to support his cover story. 

We have a better solution in hand, a documented solution.  It is a strange coincidence, is it not, that the nuclei in the main coma of 1882II were reported on Oct. 4[sup]th[/sup] as appearing as "two grains of rice" and that Maunder's Object, had it not been so overwhelmingly close, would have looked quite like the objects, same coloration, size and shape?  A check back to the earlier given chronology of the comings and goings of the multiple nuclei witnessed in the coma will disclose that on November 14 there were five objects in the coma.  The next report we have was of November 24, when only two objects were seen in the coma.  Maunder's Object was seen moving over Earth on November 17[sup]th[/sup].  Need we wonder where one of those cometary objects ventured?

[AlienSun]

Deliberately Blinded to Simple Truths


We have a problem with the way we think about our contact(s) with the UFO ETs.  We tend to dwell on the “social” side of the equation both on the positive and negative approaches:  We tend to think that they come to interact with us in a good way, or to take advantage of our subservient position.  (Maybe some of both?) 
We tend to want to believe that we are interacting with only one species from a single star when long-term, direct evidence indicates otherwise. In actuality, numerous types of ships and numerous types of creatures have been visiting our planet over long periods.  Evidently, we are of continuing interest to many advanced beings.  Is it because we are in danger of destroying sentient life at this place, or for a practical reason, more self-serving for the visitors?  We are short-timers here, crawling around on the surface that has contained its undisturbed wealth for billions of years.  But we lacked the sophistication to recognize our wealth.  We are a buyer’s market with special products that our planet, or our entire solar system, has been endowed.   
It is often argued that perhaps our existence was manufactured as a specialized and useful “tool” to produce some of those desired materials. That is not a new revelation.  Further projections from that position maintain that the remains of ancient civilizations, as found in wonderous structures around the world, are evidence of advanced architectural sciences far beyond the levels of human abilities or even human thought in those early days..
Countless examples of extremely ancient mining pits and tunnels around the world are simple evidence of concentrated activity to unearth various metals.  We need not limit human activity as the sole beneficiary of such work.  Yes, human bodies may well have done the grunt work, but they were probably not “contractors.”
Most arriving ETs would be more interested in sustaining their own needs rather than attending to ours, even as they overbuilt, over-stylized structures for the human rulers as payment.  They helped us as they “helped” themselves.  (Possibly they operated then and now under a cosmic code, or was it all just business?) 

If earth can be plundered for its resources, other places in our system would be equally available, our Moon, asteroids, and many of the over fifty other planetary moons.  Maybe our system is a supermarket for beings having depleted their local supplies under the guise of the word  “technology?”
--Advanced technology is a monster.  It has a voracious, various, and vicious appetite.
Such inherent motives are universal and already have had an impact in our planetary system which have yet to be professionally acknowledged, but, none the less, well known.  For example, Mars has two moonlets that could not possibly have formed naturally from leftovers from the making of Mars itself.  Not to mention their impossible orbits that are too perfect and too close to the planet.  
Astroscientists will acknowledge, at the least, that the bodies are similar to bodies found in the asteroid belt around Jupiter and natural forces somehow placed them in the tidy orbits around Mars.
  Phobos, the larger satellite of Mars, is covered by mysterious surface markings that indicate that considerable physical actions have occurred.  These are multiple “grooves” on its surface and quite easy to see on the 1970s Viking orbiter images, (but mostly hidden in NASA public displays). 
There are various explanations for the markings that suggest their origin.  An open-minded appraisal of the peculiar situation suggests that one type of the grooves show indications of being produced in bringing that body to Mars from its former, distant orbit, evidently from Jupiter’s asteroid belt.  In the various maneuvers required for that capture and movement, solid materials of various size slid through the thick, powdery dust in the one-percent gravity of the body as it was repeatedly pushed with explosive burst in the crater, Hall, which, understandably, happens to be located exactly at the center of mass for the body.  The various thrusts shifted its former orbit, move by move, into its present, virtually impossible location 4000 miles over Mars. 
Many of the other grooves, some appear in shocking patterns identical to those of an orderly, plowed field on earth, were estimated to be as much as 30 feet deep in the thick regolith of powdery dust on Phobos’ surface. Such actions are clearly shown in the 1977-8 Viking orbiter images of the body.  (Don’t expect to see them on NASA sites in any revealing nature as just described.  I have the original NASA CDs that plainly show such features.) 
It seems that the Martians were already at the stage of obtaining off-planet materials and went to the extreme of bringing the bacon home!  Perhaps they were the first to come to earth to mine materials they lacked?  Being of our own system, and quite close, they may have sampled our wares before any true outsiders had arrived and these neighbors built our ancient abodes in payment for what they required?

But, second thought,  that is an unlikely possibility. Other worlds in the galaxy would have matured far in advance of a Martian race and engaged in mining elsewhere for millions, if not billions, of years earlier. 
An interesting adjunct to this mining business was triggered by the Soviets from their failed Phobos2 mission of the1980s.  Their scientists claimed that the grooves on Phobos were certainly as the Vikings proved, but surprisingly, in addition, they determined that new grooves had appeared since the Viking images were made!  That helps make the case for current activities by some forces, but it remains unclear who the perpetrators are. 

I’ve mentioned little about comets in this section, merely laying some groundwork to show that we are allowed to believe old lies and untruths while activities by other forces continue.  Asteroids may play a bigger part in the cometship story yet.  

[AlienSun]

                                Comet Trading Part Two

A natural, universal, and irresistible urge of an intelligence is to control its destiny through self-promotion (via one tactic or another).  We can call this the Alpha Syndrome of sentient beings.  It runs counter to Star Trek’s high-minded spiel. In this section, I'm merely laying some groundwork to show that we are allowed to believe old lies and untruths while activities by other forces continue. 
 
When we look at the mysterious evidence of huge ancient mining pits and sophisticated but abandoned living structures around the world where thousands of workers once lived, we struggle to understand what happened there.  Typically, in those multiple places, there is no evidence that the inhabitants had a high order of culture and society by which to have created them. 
Ancient aliens coming into our system to harvest ores and building grand accommodations for primitive human workers as payment is a possible reality with the evidence we find in multiple locations around the world.  However, at some point, they all seem to have stopped their activities.  What happened?  Were they finished with the gathering of minerals they required?  –That is doubtful, given that technology typically wants the inverse in a never-ending process, but it may get rechanneled into another direction for various reasons.  So while we do not know the Why of the changes, whether abrupt or over thousands of years, we have the evidence that substantial projects were done on a large scale, with a level of activity, and for some reason it stopped. 
We are taught that comets are objects of debris, normal to our system, that are coming down to gracefully enter the maw of the furnace.  Historically, we think of comets as being near timeless because our oldest records cite their appearances and strange behaviors.  We assume them to be forever in our skies, and maybe they are, but for the wrong reasons.  Most pointedly, they never fall into the sun as basic physics would dictate.  That tell-tale fact is either thrust aside or ignored in discussions as being unworthy of the even the thought of it.  In that way comets are sacred and not to be questioned too hard because our understanding of our basic scientific principles would be at risk .  The astronomers like it that way.  It keeps them safe.
Comets are, to put it mildly, traveling conveyances for highly evolved beings, both flesh and blood and animated.  Within our solar system, they play by nature's rules, mostly.  But once outside our system, there are no rules of man nor nature that bind them as they may have other natures or none at all.
They are not from our system, but have learned to use it.  Maybe they are from within our galaxy, maybe not.  They are not exactly eternal, and they are not exactly natural to our senses either.  Therefore, they need to be judged differently, if at all, from our usual way approach to mysterious phenomena.  They will have different views on life, matter and the factor of time.  Time itself is critically important in the case for comets.  It all depends upon how the time issue is ignored, addressed here somewhat, and whether any of it applies to them or not.t. 
Comets are undoubtedly the UFOs of outer, deep space.  They bare all of the traits.  Therefore, we can start with making some judgments. With the mysterious UFO phenomena we witness and record on the earth’s surface or in the skies above us.  We emphatically know that even the close appearance of an apparent UFO to human equipment stops electrical and physical time, and perhaps aging, too.  Undoubtedly, such would be components of comet attributes if they are beyond being  frozen gravel piles as some would have it.
We cannot know how long these ships have been entering our literal world, our gravitational field to view and interact with us.  Perhaps it is best if we do not know the truth.  But they come.  They come and leave repeatedly, evidently doing their business with apparent ease.  We can assume that they monitor selected suns for at least two main reasons: What capability that star system has for achieving its potential with its available planets, and for what they need and seek.
The ”potential” aspect will be ignored here for the time being. The “what” part is that they have a constant need for various elements and materials from outside sources.  (There is a suspicion that gold is a prime requirement for their needs and not for mere ornamentation.)
   The bigger, crewed cometships of the long-period comets are always visible with even small telescopes as they enter into the inner system with their streaming tails.  Frequently, some are spectacularly visible to the naked eye.  Whether thy have some control over that feature is an open question.   Their intel-collecting devices, of drones and orbs, we witness firsthand, locally and continually.  That being obvious, they are mechanically minded to a great degree in addition to advanced mental powers. 
The other type of cometship is a smaller, short-period comet device for obtaining materials from the area under scrutiny.  Maybe temporarily manned with a live crew or AI-controlled bots, they are the ones doing the” grunt” work of procuring of the necessary payload.  They probably are sent on automatic control back to a secondary base to drop off the gatherings.  While vague, the whole of such an action exactly explains why short-period comets always behave mysteriously with their frequent, sudden appearances, equally sudden disappearances, and abandoning of otherwise substantial orbits. 
These operations are troubling to astronomers as they want the bodies to follow their expectations of being rather placid and docile.  Strange as it sounds, “blind eyes” are common in astronomers.      
The short-period comets no longer sink to earth to load from mining pits as in former times.  They now only prey on the bodies of asteroids containing vastly more elements than any ores recovered from digging in the earth could possibly provide.  Things change. Humanity grew and matured somewhat.  Earth’s population became self-sustaining if not stable.  The old manner of pit mining took time, slave labor, and little equipment.   Early earth rulers must have loved the simple arrangement.  But that all ended as the comet folk withdrew from direct contact.  The pit mines, the splendid mining towns, the workers, and even the rulers themselves, all withered away. 
We don’t know what caused the change from direct earth acquisitions taken from the planet’s surface to capturing asteroids at some point or period, but it happened.  Earth may have gone into various upheavals,  including earthly floods, asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, earthly warfare, lesser interhuman conflicts, and/or possibly, outside interventions.  
Higher minds were obviously at play making decisions.  Perhaps a most high authority decreed that human leaders had subverted themselves and their kind with the mine activities to no great gain  for the future of humankind, and the materials being shipped off the planet was directly detrimental to the future availability of those ores to humanity itself. The crude mining operations gave way to orders for short-period comets to chase and collect asteroids piece by piece. That would have been a far more active operation than the former plan of the cargo vehicles simply dropping down to be loaded up.  The former, blatant connection between ETs and material gathering was eliminated from human eyes.

The times of the 1970s saw new ideas surfacing from earth for mining asteroids.  One plan was brilliantly simple.  –Even if that future was distant. Asteroids would be captured, complete, in some fashion and redirected with harnessed propulsion units.  They would be given impetus toward an earth orbit.  Once there, they would be mined for usable ores, and the residue sent off for disposal into the sun.  Some of the larger hulls would be manufactured into sturdy, low-cost orbital habitats as the earth’s population grew.  Various proposals were suggested.  Since asteroids present an ongoing, serious threat to earth’s safety, we would eventually design efforts to neutralize or utilize them.  Harvesting them would be one solution.  That situation still stands today as serious as it ever was.

                                                 To be continued….

[AlienSun]

Gravity and Long-period Comets

I’ll state this as simply possible: There is no way that a natural object in a near-stationary position, call it an “orbit” if you like, out at the farthest reaches of our sun’s influences, can fall directly downward out of that position to arrive at the sun’s vicinity with a motion of velocity and angle that will safely convey itself around the sun such that it will return exactly along a path back to the point of origin every time. 
If those unnatural motions take place before your eyes, only two possibilities could have made it happen.  One would be that some force violated simple physics to cause it to happen.  The other explanation would be that actions happened because an order was issued, a Capt. Kirk would say, “Make it so…” and the body moved as desired and required.  Limitations of common physics be damned.  If a sling-shot motion was required for the needed momentum to start the home trip, it was neatly accomplished using the sun’s help. 
In the decades we have been putting all manner of devices into space and on elaborate journeys to exact locations measured in fractions of meters, such moves are commonplace.  Yes, physics was exactly involved and required and, of course, recognized for its worth. 
“But for comets, no, they just do that stuff. Yeah, they can be found making alterations to their motions and velocities as they go about their “natural” orbits coming and leaving the sun, but let us not pay too much attention or get too concerned about how and why they do such.  Why, yes, you could connect them to UFO activities because of the strangeness factor, but, no, leave comets to knowledgeable astronomers.  They know their business even if they don’t believe aliens are visiting us.  And remember the words of Carl Sagan still echoing in the background of big Science and its relationship over you.  ‘Yes, ETs are out there, but they can’t get here.’”  And that is all you need to know.  I leave you to think on your own.

[quintessentone]

Well, AlienSun, you make some interesting points to consider, but how I see the Oort cloud and comets both short period and long period, is now shaped by the findings in the video below. This may change as we advance our science and understanding of our solar system and beyond. They say long period comets are unpredictable.

As for aliens' intentions, I have shaped my opinion from experience and observation...it's obvious to me that whatever is happening is happening in the shadows, with or without the government. One thing for sure is that they are showing themselves to us but we still don't want to engage, it appears. There is another video I could post as to what would happen if there was alien contact, two scenarios, one good contact, the other bad contact, but I am not sure what this thread is really about. Comets?

[UltraBudgie]

Hmm...

Recently, several morphologically inactive near-Earth objects (NEOs) were reported to experience significant nongravitational accelerations inconsistent with radiation-based effects, and possibly explained by volatile-driven outgassing. However, these “dark comets” display no evidence of comae in archival images, which are the defining feature of cometary activity. Here we report detections of nongravitational accelerations on seven additional objects previously classified as inactive (doubling the population) that could also be explainable by asymmetric mass loss. A detailed search of archival survey and targeted data rendered no detection of dust activity in any of these objects in individual or stacked images.

Surveillance?

Paper (December 11, 2024): Two Distinct Populations of Dark Comets Delineated by Orbits and Sizes (12 page PDF)