The End of the World as We Know It – not

Safe for now

Editor's Note: one of the several ways the Planet Earth was supposed to be destroyed this month is no longer a threat. The Comet Elenin, a.k.a. Planet X plus a lot of other things, was a red-hot item among the aluminum foil hat crowd. They speculated that Comet Elenin was going to smash into Earth and case mass extinctions, if not total annihilation. But according to the comet's discoverer, that's not going to happen. Comet Elenin was scheduled to make its closest approach to Earth next Sunday, October 16.

Comet Elenin disintegrated

October 6th, 2011 | Author: Leonid Elenin

Based on the first images of the comet Elenin after its exit from the conjunction with the Sun, we can tell what comet mostly disintegrated. 

Maybe we can still observe swarm of comet’s debris. On the left you can see possible position of this “cloud”. 

Brightness of this object does not exceed 18 meters, which means what now, magnitude of the comet is lower then predicted on 12m. 

Hopefully in the near future debris of the comet will be observed on a large telescopes, and perhaps we’ll see some details of this “cloud”. 

Currently the comet is very low above the horizon and I observed it in nautical twilight, but comet will quickly ascend on the Northern skies, but it’s further observations may be hampered by the full Moon…