A recent sighting of another strange object over Severodvinsk Russia captured February 26, 2011.

Nasa today used one of its craft to revisit a comet at close range for the first time in the history of space exploration.

The vessel Stardust flew within 112 miles of the Tempel 1 comet as it hurtled past at 24,000 miles an hour at 4.37am this morning.

Scientists confirmed the encounter, which took place 210million miles from Earth, had been a success 25 minutes later and that Stardust had taken 72 high-resolution pictures as planned.

It has now begun beaming back pictures taken during its fly-by. Nasa's Chris Jones said all the images are stored on the craft and it will take another six hours for everything to be downloaded.

The photos will let researchers compare how Tempel 1 looks now with its appearance in 2005 when a probe from the Deep Impact craft was deliberated slammed into it.

Abstract

This paper provides an alternate theory for comet behavior and shows comets to be planetary, lunar, and asteroidal bodies in their formative stages. It demonstrates that tail matter is attracted towards an asteroidal comet nucleus by strong electrical forces. Additionally, two charging mechanisms are identified, both of which produce a net negative charge on the comet nucleus. This is supported by data from recent space probes.

Comet wandering, sunward spikes, a shrinkage of the coma as the comet approaches the Sun, curved tails, the gathering and maintenance of meteoroid streams, spiraling of tail material, and the rapid orbital circularization of large newly captured comets are also discussed.

Earlier papers used similar concepts to predict the existence of strong electrical fields in the vicinity of Saturn, showing Saturn and its ring system to be analogous to the Sun and its zodiacal disk. The realization of the proton wind-supported capacitors of Saturn and the Sun led to a number of unexpected theoretical considerations that included,

1. the recognition of the charging process used by comets
2. the postulation of an ion and dust cloud held back by solar wind pressure near the orbit of Jupiter - which is one source of comet tail matte
3. a postulated electric dipole red-shift in photons leaving the central star

Still another theoretical result was the possibility of an electrically induced magnetic dynamo powered by a planet spinning inside the orbit of a slightly charged moon. Empirical correlation between moons and magnetic fields has been known for some time, though the wandering of our Moon has remained an unsolved mystery.

An attempt is made to explain solar system formation from the time a newly formed twin star system leaves the galactic center to when it develops its solar system by the capture of comets. The reader's knowledge of planetary encounter and N-body literature is assumed since it is basic to the paper but unreferenced.

However, the text by T. J. J. See, which develops the first capture theory for the origin of the solar system (OSS), is indispensable. A major result of this paper is also the quantization of' Newtonian space. Finally, the link between planetary formation, geomagnetic reversals, and biological evolution is examined.

I have recently received a handful of uninformed responses from people who have read my series of essays on the possible influence of electricity in the solar system - including the electric nature of comets.

Several have written to me claiming that I was not giving proper credit to astrophysicist James McCanney, even asserting that McCanney "originated" the electric comet theory. Some have further stated that "electric universe" theorist Wallace Thornhill has "borrowed" from McCanney's theories without acknowledging a debt to McCanney.

Both of these assertions are false.

McCanney did not "originate" the electric comet theory, because:

1. the theory has roots in many 19th century speculations about comets
2. the catalytic work on the electric sun and electric comets was that of the twentieth century pioneer Ralph Juergens, whose published papers on the subject pre-date those of McCanney by several years
3. Thornhill's thesis was directly inspired by Juergens', whose work Thornhill diligently followed from the beginning
4. the hypothesis was favored by Thornhill, to which he has added many nuances, and differs significantly from McCanney's
5. the core of McCanney's thesis is thrown into doubt by space age discovery, while Thornhill's is not

Nevertheless, McCanney must be given credit for having explored cometary phenomena from a unique electrical vantage point and having added to scientific discussion of the "electric comet."

A brief historical outline of the evolution of the electric comet theory may be helpful.

In July 2005, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft dropped an 820-lb copper projectile onto the surface of Comet Tempel 1. Almost six years later, NASA finally saw the impact crater. On Valentine's Day 2011, long after the dust had cleared, Stardust-NExT flew past Tempel 1 and photographed the impact site:

It's not very impressive--and that is telling. The lack of a well-defined crater reveals much about the structural integrity of the comet's surface. Science team member Pete Schultz of Brown University explains: "We see a [shallow] crater with a small mound in the center, and it appears that some of the ejecta went up and came right back down. This tells us this cometary nucleus is fragile and weak based on how subdued the crater is we see today."

Stay tuned for updates as the analysis progresses beyond the "first-look" stage, and meanwhile, browse the flyby gallery.

The Stardust-NExT spacecraft sped past comet 9P/Tempel 1 at 11:39 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Valentine's Day, and Tuesday afternoon, the science team unveiled images representing some of the flyby's greatest hits.

Among 72 pictures taken during closest approach to the comet's potato-shaped nucleus, the craft captured changes in the cometscape since it last was imaged by NASA's Deep Impact craft six years ago. The crater that mission's 800-pound projectile carved into the nucleus - obscured by dust during the Deep Impact flyby - also swung into Stardust-NExT's view. And the craft captured images of intriguing new regions of the nucleus's surface.

We had a chat with the Cassiopaeans the other night and got in a few questions about Comet Elenin, to wit:

Q: (Andromeda) Is the outburst of asteroid 596 Scheila related at all to Comet Elenin?

A: Yes. And other bodies. See McCanney.

Q: (Andromeda) So what caused that asteroid to become a comet?

A: It became electrified!

In case you don't know, 596 Scheila is an asteroid that suddenly began behaving like a comet this past December. See HERE for some nice images.

As I've mentioned before, James McCanney's Plasma Theory of Comets is quite interesting and deserves some consideration. I understand from a few people who have written to me about it that McCanney isn't the only one approaching the problem from this direction: there is also Wallace Thornhill and David Talbot, but I haven't yet had time to explore what they are saying.

Anyway, in respect of the above remarks by the Cassiopaeans regarding McCanney's theories vis-à-vis 596 Schiela, my astronomer friend made the following comment to me in a private communication:

The activity of Scheila started roughly at the same time as the storm on Saturn. Can it be because of an alignment Saturn-Elenin-a few belt asteroids-Scheila?

He included a graphic showing the alignment:

"For the first time, we'll see the same comet before and after its closest approach to the sun," explains Joe Veverka, principal investigator for NASA's Stardust-NExT mission.

The comet is Tempel 1, which NASA's Deep Impact probe visited in 2005. Now another NASA spacecraft, Stardust-NExT, is closing in for a second look on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, 2011. The two visits bracket one complete orbit of the comet around the sun--and a blast of solar heat.

"Close encounters with the sun never go well for a comet," says Veverka. "Fierce solar heat vaporizes the ices in the comet's core, causing it to spit dust and spout gas. The cyclic loss of material eventually leads to its demise."

Researchers suspect the flamboyant decay doesn't happen evenly all over a comet's surface*, but until now they've lacked a way to document where, exactly, it does occur. Stardust NExT will image some of the same surface areas Deep Impact photographed 6 years ago, revealing how these areas have changed and where material has been lost.

NASA said its Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) mission has discovered 20 comets and more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs).
NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 28 million miles of Earth's path around the sun. A comet is an icy small Solar System body that when close enough to the Sun displays a visible coma - a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere - and sometimes also a tail. Asteroids are actually small solar system bodies orbiting around the sun.

NASA's NEOWISE is an enhancement of the $320 million Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission that was launched in Dec. 2009. WISE scanned the entire celestial sky in infrared light about 1.5 times and captured more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids and comets close to Earth.

Perseus constellation is one of the oldest known constellations in the night sky, dating back to ancient Greek times. It was first mapped by Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and geographer, in the 2nd century A.D. Ptolemy authored the Almagest, the only comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy, which contained astronomical models in tables that made it easy to calculate both past and future positions of the planets, as well as a catalogue of 1022 stars and their positions in star constellations. Perseus was one of the 48 constellations included in Ptolemy's catalogue and is still one of the 88 modern constellations, recognized by the International Astronomical Union.