Comet Elenin hangs in northern sky in early evening ...

While everyone is talking about the Draconid Meteor Shower which is now at it's peak today (during the sun light hours) in the Constellation Draco (located in the northern sky just above the horizon), everyone is missing another major event just to the east of that in the northern sky and slightly to the east.

While my family was watching the 1982 John Carpenter film "The Thing" to prepare us for next week's release of yet a second remake on the big screen, my son noticed a bright object in the northern sky through the window that he said looked like a UFO.

Of course, being the skeptic and not wanting any more media attention than I already get from the biased, screwed up Chicago Sun-Times (which is fast going out of business -- but not fast enough), I'm not going to start screaming "The Sky is Falling. There is a UFO" out there. But it did look strange like it had a veil around the lower part of it.

I remember watching Halley's comet streak across the sky (well, streak would be an exaggeration because while it WAS streaking a millions of MPH, it was so far away that it appeared to just hang in the sky. That was back in 1986. To celebrate that famous comet which comes around once every 75-76 years, I bought a huge telescope (six feet tall) and very powerful (which I still have) and my daughter and I went in the backyard and really got a close up of Halley's comet with its long bright tail. It was spectacular. I remember writing about it for the Chicago Sun-Times when I was a columnist at the newspaper back then -- when it was a real newspaper and not the crap that it is today.

Hey, why not beat the crap out of a lousy newspaper like the Sun-Times in a column blog post about a comet? Who knows. Maybe those crazy people who took their lives when the comet Hale-Bopp passed through the sky in March of 1997. Remember that one, that they dubbed Heaven's Gate after a group of 39 people by that name committed suicide believing they would be scooped up and taken away to meet God. The only place the Sun-Times is going is to Hell. But then, I digress. With some enjoyment, though, I might add.

Anyway, Elenin has gotten no press at all in the mainstream news media. (I'll skip the opportunity digress on that topic which continues my other digressions.) But it is something to see. Check it out tonight. It is at the end of its cycle because apparently it has been getting too close to the sun (sun-times) and the sun's flares have been destroying it little by little.

It's worth a look. Far better to see that than to buy a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times. (Well, Hispanics, Blacks and now Arabs are boycotting the newspaper so maybe it won't need a sun flare to put it out of business.

Here's a link to the Elenin web site:  Click here.

And here is a link to the Draconid meteor shower that few will be able to see because of the timing of the shower (day time) and the nearing full moon at night: Click here.

And there's more on Hale-Bopp and the Heaven's Gate cult (just in case some of the Sun-Times maniacs have any cryptic thoughts.) Click here.

-- Ray Hanania
http://RayHanania.wordpress.com