That's great Eddy and I agree!

I also feel that your discourse is appropriate at a time when we are visited by a foreign guest. There are no 'cook books' to refer to and the appearance of a comet challenges our understanding of astrology and our capability as astrologers.

thought this link might be appreciated. G

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009 ... ncomet.htm

As a reminder, Lu Lin will be near Regulus tonight, making it easier to spot.

A bit off topic but another interesting thing is that asteroid Ceres too is in the constellation Leo, near star ? Leonis at the end of the 'back' of the lion. Just look in the Comet tracker map that Mark gave.
Via this link http://transientsky.wordpress.com/2009/ ... uary-2009/ a Ceres finder chart can be found. Note that this chart has to be turned for northern hemisphere observers.

I don't mean to promote the use of asteroids in astrology, in the contrary I don't believe they really mean anything. However it is interesting to 'repeat' Piazzi's 1801 discovery of the first of what would be an endless number of bigger and smaller 'rocks'. I haven't seen it myself yet.

granny_skot wrote:thought this link might be appreciated. G

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009 ... ncomet.htm

Thanks. Usually a comet is named after it's discoverer. In this case Lu lin was the name of the observatory. Must be a difference in cultures east vs west.

Comet Lulin transit my wifes natal Moon yesterday. It wasn't all positive.
Something was getting into her hair, I am certain.

The great thing with retrograde planets is that they often turn round and apologize afterwards.

I can warmly recommend the Planetariums of WinStar that may be downloaded for free at http://www.winstars.net/english/

Personally I like WinStar1 best - or at least it is more practical for many of my uses. However, WinStar2 has improved graphics and includes much more detail.

When you have loaded the program(s), go to the internet tag and update orbital elements. Then you will be able to follow the motion of comet Lulin, but the present magnitude is now already +8 so this is nothing you can observe with the naked eye and it would take a skilled amateur astronomer together with a powerful telescope to locate it.

Something was getting into her hair, I am certain.

The word 'comet' comes from the Greek 'coma' which means 'hair'. Just think of the constellation Coma Berenices, Berenice's Hair, between Leo and Virgo. A comet is thus a hairy star. Interesting how the comet can be related to the expression 'getting into someone's hair'. I hope your wife's ok now. The comet moves fast so it shouldn't last long.

Here's another online starmap (no download needed). Can be useful sometimes. http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/

Thanks, Eddy

My wife's responses were pretty eccentric but fortunately she did not go into a total coma. That would be stretching it a bit and I'll have to watch my words don't bounce back on me on this one. It would be easy to chose an orbit that took me way too close the Sun, in which case I'd soon run out of wax.

The coma by the way is the subtle body that that forms when the comet comes close enough to the Sun and that envelops the nucleus. It is the pressure exerted on the coma by the solar wind that causes the tail or 'hair' to form. You obviously knew that, I just included the details for the sake of the discussion. It's rather strange that the word coma both means 'hair' and also being 'way out' and in a state of unconscious? I suppose 'coma' could mean 'loosing you head'.

Comets are like telegrams from the Gods. They could bring either his revelation or his wrath. That which once was far away is now close up. Comets bring an opportunity to get a close up view on something one is not used to seeing. Something coming up from the deep does provide a rare opportunity for sudden evolutionary leaps.

I?ve been following comet Lulin for a while too now.

Just wondering if the message that Lulin brought was picked up by anyone?

I read the news everyday and follow the stories, but I can?t say I noticed anything really abnormal.

Well is one thing that has caught my attention. But I?m not really willing say unless... It?s big, and pretty obvious. Even though it seems just background.

Also wondering about the orbit... what could this mean... what other body does this?

There are some questions that I raise. Perhaps a short brainstorm on it...? To look away from the astronomical data and to put mandane adjectives to the visitor.

I looked a bit around on the internet and found two Greek words, written differently but both being 'coma'. ???? - hair (makes me suddenly think of the word comb) and ???? - deep sleep. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coma.

The coma by the way is the subtle body that that forms when the comet comes close enough to the Sun and that envelops the nucleus. It is the pressure exerted on the coma by the solar wind that causes the tail or 'hair' to form.

and from the wiktionary article,

(astronomy) A cloud of dust surrounding the nucleus of a comet.

In Dutch there's an expression that one can have "cottonwool in the head" if you don't feel well, 'thick' feeling in the head, bad concentration etc. I might be totally wrong but perhaps these two different Greek words could be related like this. Hair as a 'cloud of dust' and coma as a 'cloud of dust' in the head.

Comets are like telegrams from the Gods. They could bring either his revelation or his wrath. That which once was far away is now close up.

I'm not sure what to think about comets. It is sure though that in the past people feared comets because they believed it to be changes in the atmosphere of the 'sublunar', after all in the Aristotelian world view, everiything beyond the moon was perfect and predictable. People also believed that the comet's tail contained poisonous gasses causing diseases like the plague. Part of the fear was taken awy when the parallax could be measured showing that comets were further than the Moon (I believe Tycho Brahe did this) and thus no atmospheric events. Another disenchantment of comets was the calculation of the orbit of Halley's comet by.... indeed Edmund Halley. (Some) comets have a quite regular orbit and the return can be predicted almost like the positions of planets.

The problem is that some comets, especially the big ones have a long orbit or even are a one time passing, need thousands of years to reach the center of the solar system. If (big) comets are 'telegrams of God' then he must have sent them very long ago, anticipating on what might/would happen. But perhaps they indeed are sort of signs. I wonder what the magnificent comets of Hyakutake and Hale Bopp in 1996 and 1997 then could have indicated, 9/11, Yugoslavia tribunal, uprising of Chinese economy. Quite difficult matter.

Just wondering if the message that Lulin brought was picked up by anyone?

I read the news everyday and follow the stories, but I can?t say I noticed anything really abnormal.

I can't say either Night Sky, over here in the Netherlands every seems to be normal. However there was a terrible airplane crash last wednesday. However keep in mind that the comet is a rather faint one.

Also wondering about the orbit... what could this mean... what other body does this?

As the planets move close to the ecliptic we are used to consider everything with different orbits as a bit strange. The theory of the origin of comets comes from Jan Hendrik Oort a Dutch astronomer (had to say that ). He proposed that about 20,000 to 50,000 Astronomical Units from the Sun or up to almost 1 lightyear, there is a spherical cloud from which the comets originate, the 'Oort cloud'. The gravitational effects of other stars affect the clouds and can cause a comet to 'break loose' and go the the center of the solar system. Because of this distance it can take thousands of years for a comet to get near the sun. Furhtermore because of the spherical shape of the cloud, the comets can come from everywhere and don't move according to the plane of the ecliptic.

Gerard Kuiper (another Dutch astronomer) and others speculated on objects beyond Pluto's orbit. These are rather close to the ecliptic and the first of these objects were found in 1992. The beginning of the discovery of many Kuiper Belt Objects or Trans Neptunian Objects had started. Some astrologers followed and started to use these worlds of ice and rock in the charts. I don't use them though because I'm not really convinced of them and moreover the extensive use of extra objects would give too much information and would obscure astrology rather than clarify.

NightSky wrote:Just wondering if the message that Lulin brought was picked up by anyone? I read the news everyday and follow the stories, but I can?t say I noticed anything really abnormal.

My feeling is that the messages of Comet Lulin are in the brewing. It might be easier to talk openly on these matters in hindsight and maybe we will se the effect more clearly in a year or two.

I do very much feel that we are on the breach of a New Era with advancements within technology and science that to some greater extent may incorporate astrology and the alternative.

I wonder what the magnificent comets of Hyakutake and Hale Bopp in 1996 and 1997 then could have indicated, 9/11, Yugoslavia tribunal, uprising of Chinese economy. Quite difficult matter.

A very good question. To gain better perpective on the here and now we should study the past. I certainly believe we cannot judge the effects of a Comet like Lulin for some time in the world around us.

One subject I am just beginning to research right now is the possible connections between comets and famous nativities. There doesnt seem to be much on this topic in astrological literature. Most on the tradition focuses on the death of kings rather than the birth of noteable people.

MarkC wrote: One subject I am just beginning to research right now is the possible connections between comets and famous nativities. There doesnt seem to be much on this topic in astrological literature. Most on the tradition focuses on the death of kings rather than the birth of noteable people.

Hello Mark,
Well in literature there are lucky comets. The "star of Julius", the Venusian comet who was the sign that Julius soul was received between Gods, and obviously Magi's star, the star which accompanied Jesus birth.
Marsilio Ficino wrote the famous sermon, but he was mentioning a very ancient tradition, it was Origen in the second century AD to mention that the star mentioned in Luke Gospel was a comet.
Margherita