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Article: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected](Nancy )
Subject: Re: Hale-Bopp THEN and NOW (1-6)
Date: 14 Feb 1997 16:40:41 GMT
In article <[email protected]> Greg Neill
writes:
> Nancy ([email protected]) wrote:
>> ISSUE 5: Hale-Bopp is supposedly a repeating comet, per
>> the IAU. With no prior history of such a comet 3-4,000
years
>> ago, with this supposed visit THE FIRST on record, the
IAU
>> sallied forth with this period. Based on what? ... It's
not until
>> it does its turnaround that astronomers say, "ah,
it's a
>> hyperbole, a non-repeater" or whatever.
>
> The period is based upon the orbital parameters determined
by
> observing the comet. That's what orbit determination is,
Nancy.
> If you know the size and shape of the orbit, you know the
period.
> [email protected] (Greg Neill)
This was the aspect of the Hale-Bopp fraud that most raised the hair at the back of thinking men and women when it was first announced, and this hair has kept rising as the orbit got jerked around so Hale-Bopp could line up on occasion with this or that star cluster and the gullible public pointed to this "evidence" of Hale-Bopp at those times.
I again quote from David Levy's book, The Quest for Comets, page 103.
"With that information, Marsden could calculate the comet's orbit. Within a few days, another CBAT circular appeared with a preliminary orbit for the comet, but it was a full month before enough accurate positions from telescopes all over the world told a better story. Curving around the sun in just over 50 years, Comet 1991q is now called Periodic Comet Levy, a newly welcomed permanent member of the sun's inner circle. What's more, the orbit is similar to that of a bright comet that appeared almost 500 years ago when Columbus was discovering America. Determining whether the new comet is actually a return of the comet of 1499 will have to wait until the comet rounds the sun and appears again in 2042. Until then we simply will not know the orbit well enough."