{"id":72270,"date":"2013-12-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=72270"},"modified":"2013-12-02T10:40:15","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T15:40:15","slug":"night-of-the-comet-ison-emerges-from-behind-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/astronomy\/night-of-the-comet-ison-emerges-from-behind-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Night of the Comet — ISON Emerges from Behind the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ison-in-out\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For those following Comet ISON<\/a> (or C\/2012-S1, named for the ISON Observatory in Russia, where it was discovered, also called Comet Nevski\u2013Novichonok after the comrades who first spotted it), ISON reached perihelion Thursday, disappearing behind the Sun for a few hours. <\/p>\n

Its proximity to the Sun was so close — about 12% of the Earth-Sun distance — that astronomers were writing its obituary yesterday when a fragment of the object emerged from behind the Sun several hours later, seeming to be significantly smaller with a bunch of it having been cooked off. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

ISON was discovered more than a year ago, on Sept. 21, 2012. But it remained a fairly uneventful discovery till it started having outbursts of gas and other material on Nov. 1 and then again on Nov. 13, making it much more visible.<\/p>\n

Many people ask about the astrology of comets, which is a speciality of its own — one that hardly anybody practices, since comets are so rare, and most people cannot remember what they had for breakfast. With comets we are in the region of ‘signs and omens’ rather than standard interpretations. <\/p>\n

Their orbits are typically so weird (off the ecliptic, parabolic or hyperbolic), and so difficult to plot exactly, that we don’t usually have a longitude position for them and hence cannot declare them to be a creature of some zodiac sign or another. <\/p>\n

\"Comet<\/a>
Comet ISON photographed from the ESO small-body observatory in northern Chile on Nov. 15. Read more about the photo here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I think of them as demarcation points in history — manifestations that say ‘this moment is meaningful now, for reasons that will be obvious now, if you look’. Notably, it was discovered in the very last days of the Mayan 13th baktun. The Western astrology chart for the discovery is somewhat unremarkable, though I have not been able to identify a discovery time, which might help clarify things. <\/p>\n

However, there is a T-square in the chart between Venus in Leo, Mars in Scorpio and Nessus in Aquarius — a little reminder of all the Venus and Mars stuff (emotional, sexual) that underlies all of our society’s woes, including things like school shootings (and our response to them). The closest aspect in the chart is Venus in Leo trine Pholus in Sagittarius. That, actually, is really interesting, and I will let you know what it means when my astrology muses clue me in. <\/p>\n

The comet’s discovery, its presumed loss and then its reemergence suggests that it’s a good idea to keep developing and transforming good ideas, even when all hope seems lost — they may emerge on the other side of the orbit in a new form. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those following Comet ISON (or C\/2012-S1, named for the ISON Observatory in Russia, where it was discovered, also called Comet Nevski\u2013Novichonok after the comrades who first spotted it), ISON reached perihelion Thursday, disappearing behind the Sun for a few hours. Its proximity to the Sun was so close — about 12% of the Earth-Sun … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}