Hale-Bopp
The Great Comet of 1997
What the hell is really going on?
In the summer of 1995, two amateur astronomers independently and accidentally discovered a new comet. Like nearly all comets, this new comet was named after its discoverers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. But unlike most comets which are discovered 3 or 4 months prior to their closest approach to the earth and sun, this comet was found about 20 months before its closest approach - absolutely unprecedented! The comet is no threat to the earth, at its closest, it will still be as far away as the sun, yet there are some very strange and weird aspects to this comet which officials seem reluctant to tell us about or discuss.
- When the comet was still as far away as Halley's comet, it was 1000 times brighter!
- The comet was first seen when its distance from the sun was much too great for the gaseous tail of the comet to form. Yet it had a huge tail.
- Observations by the Hubble space telescope and other powerful ground based scopes revealed "unusual" details - chunks breaking off from the comet and no natural reason for this to happen since the comet was too far away from the sun for gravity or thermal effects to do this.
- The orbit of the comet is very strange - as if some intelligence had engineered a comet to get our attention!
This is a picture of Hale-Bopp taken in early October of 1995 through the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The comet itself is shown in the top part of the picture, that bright area below the head of the comet is a chunk (to use NASA's words) that broke off from the comet. NASA however failed to point out that at this distance from the sun (past the orbit of Jupiter) there were no gravitational tidal forces from the sun to break 'chunks' off a comet. Nor was it hot enough for a 'chunk' to break off. In fact, at this enormous distance from the sun, even the Hubble should not have been able to see an 'normal' comet at all.
This is a picture of Hale-Bopp taken by the HST in late October of 1995. This picture mysteriously disappeared from the JPL Web site a short time after it was released. In fact, it puzzled me why there were no HST pictures since early October 1995. What are they hiding?? I went back into my archives because I knew I had saved this picture so I took a closer look at it. Notice the very thin fine kinked and wavy lines of light coming from the comet. What would cause this?? And why was this last known picture taken by the HST removed from the web?
This is currently the best picture of the comet on the web. It was taken by the .5 meter (20 inches) telescope at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands. Not their biggest scope. They claim their big scope was being worked on. Right. The biggest astronomical event in centuries and they knew over a year in advance it was coming. Yet, they expect us to believe they were doing maintance on their telescope? Still, this picture does reveal that the comet is very strange. Notice the multiple jets of bright gases. The black spot and structure at the center of the comet is an optical device on the scope to cut down on glare so details around the edges of the comet are more clearly seen.
But where are recent pictures from the HST or other large ground based scopes??