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Comet 29P is one of the largest known comets at about 37 miles or 60
kilometers. It is part of a group of comets called the Centaurs. These comets
orbit between Saturn and Jupiter. What you might not realize is that this
comet is the second most active body in the solar system after Jupiter's mighty moon Io.
Why this comet is erupting has scientists baffled. Given this, it is perhaps even more
strange that most observations of Comet 29P have come from amateur astronomers.
One of the problems with Comet 29P is that its eruptions have been unpredictable,
meaning getting telescope time to do the systematic monitoring has been quite difficult.
Amateur astronomers do not have these limitations. They can bring out their
telescopes whenever required and can observe whenever they choose. On the 25th
of September the patient dedication of an amateur group of astronomers was
rewarded in the most unexpected way. They were located across the globe in
Utah, Scotland, France and Tenerife. When they trained their telescope on the
comet, they spotted several sequential eruptions. There were four obvious ones and then a
fifth one at the end. After less than two days the brightness of the comet had increased 250 times.
The series of outbursts generated a bright nebulous coma. The amateur astronomers then alerted
other amateur and professional astronomers. Since the outburst was so unusual, a
group based at six US universities were able to obtain time on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This would have been the first time that they would be able to catch the
aftermath of such a big outburst. The previous observations had been much smaller outbursts.
Unfortunately, the Hubble Space Telescope experienced a technical glitch on the
25th of October and went into safe mode one day before it was supposed to observe the comet.
They were hoping to be able to observe if any fragments were ejected by the
comet, possibly forming a new comet on a different trajectory. The fact is that astronomers know very
little about Comet 29P and its strange behavior. They don't understand why it
suddenly increased its activity now. Their concept is that these are balls of ice and dust.
The activity of comets is therefore related to the heat from the Sun.
As it moves closer, more material is vaporized, leading to greater activity
and this is where Comet 29P presents a headache for those scientists.
As its orbit is circular, meaning its distance from the Sun barely changes.
This would therefore mean that it should not show any rapid changes in activity at all.
And yet, it is the second most active body in the solar system.
So, how do they attempt to explain this then? They assume that the comet has a slow
rotation rate and has one side that is more volatile than the other.
So when this faces the Sun, it becomes more active. In their theory comets, asteroids and
meteorites, all have a common origin which is way outside the solar system.
And yet we find many comets that seem to be associated with large gas giants.
Professor Vsekhsviatskii, director of the Kiev observatory and head of the faculty of astronomy
of the University of Kiev, had concluded from his studies of comets that celestial
mechanics, the distribution and statistics of cometary orbits, and
consideration of the kinematics of the cometary system, leave no doubt
whatsoever that all comets, and therefore the products of their decay, were formed
inside the solar system and were formed a little later than the planets were.
The existence of the family of short- period comets of Jupiter, Saturn
Uranus and Neptune and the peculiarities of their motion and nature, their chemistry,
their close association with Jupiter prior to the discovery,
demonstrates a recent origin of comets. As Fred Whipple wrote in his book, “The
Mystery of Comets,” a plot of the orbits of short period comets, projected on the
plane of Jupiter's orbit, show a remarkable clustering. The ring of the
aphelion curve outlines Jupiter's orbit beautifully. The conclusion has
been clear for more than a century. Jupiter's huge attractive mass has
somehow collected two-thirds of all the short-period comets into a family.
When voyager discovered that Jupiter had a faint ring system, it turned out that
professor Vsekhsviatskii had predicted the ring's existence as early as 1960 in a
science journal. And the passage from this paper is as follows, ”The existence of active ejection
processes in Jupiter's system demonstrated by cometary astronomy, gives grounds
for assuming that Jupiter is encircled by comet and meteorite
material in the form of a ring similar to the rings of Saturn.” It will sadly come as no surprise that
his name is totally absent from any scientific literature relating to comets and planetary rings.
Electrical stressing events can cause the ejection of bodies from large gas giants.
The Electric Universe concept is that comets are nothing more than asteroids
which have a different potential to their surroundings. These objects spend most of their time at the
extreme edge of the solar system, which has a different charge potential to the inner part.
When they approach the Sun, a charge imbalance develops between the nucleus
and the high voltage and charge density near the Sun. As the electrical stresses start to grow,
discharge takes place and a plasma sheath develops which appears as the coma and tail.
The observed jets are the electric arc discharge which will cause electrical
machining to the surface of the comet. This excavated material is accelerated along the jets into space.
But this comet does not have the same elliptical orbit, so how would this work?
If we inspect the orbit of Comet 29P, we can see that although it is largely
circular, it is inclined to the ecliptic which is where the majority of the
planets orbit around the Sun. Would this allow Comet 29P to gain a charge imbalance to the Sun?
If this were the only factor, we would find the discharges only occurring after
it had reached its highest point and returned closer to the ecliptic, and this is not what we find. If we
look at the average flare rate of the comet, it seems to happen roughly every 57 days.
With a range between 52 and 60 days. When we examine the rotation of the Sun,
this takes 24 days to rotate at the equator and about 35 days at the pole. So
does this 57 day average correspond to a double rotation of the Sun?
Could the Sun's heliospheric current sheet be responsible for triggering
short-lived outbreaks on the comet? Could the rotation of active hotspots on
the Sun periodically cause coronal ejections to be thrown out at higher
latitudes which then head out towards the comet? This sudden change in the charge could then
trigger the larger events on the surface of the comet. One other interesting coincidence is the
alignment of the planets during the highest and lowest points of activity on the comet.
If we look at April 2019, this is a predicted low point for the comet and we
see that there are no planets aligned with it. October 2019 is a predicted high point,
and we see Earth is aligned. May 2020 is a low, again no planets are aligned.
Then November 2020 is a high and we see both Mars and Earth are aligned.
June 2021 was a low and once more no planets were aligned. Then finally
December 2021 was predicted to be a high and we see Venus and Earth aligned.
This data uses the average light curve from the comet over a prolonged period of time,
and in some cases we can see that the flaring events occur before the actual peak of the curve.
So the most recent was predicted to occur in December, but the flare actually
occurred in late September. Is this mere coincidence or is this an additional trigger?
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