Three day Long Solar Eclipse in September

If you follow the Comet Elenin story much you may have seen this story about the comet eclipsing the sun for three days in September:

http://revelation2012.blogspot.com/2011/03/urgent-3-days-of-darkness-comet-elenin.html

Notice that it clearly says that the comet will eclipse the sun for three days around September 26th. Notice also that it includes a quote from Revelation Chapter 6 about the sun turning black and the moon turning red (as blood). These descriptions from the Bible are descriptions of what solar and lunar eclipses actually look like. You may remember that solar eclipses happen at new moons and lunar eclipses happen at full moons.

If you look at this page, you can see that the moon will be new on September 27th and the lunar perigee happens on the 28th. That is, the moon will be near the earth at the new moon, making the conditions right for a total solar eclipse then.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html

Now, if you look on the internet, you will see that people are proclaiming that there will be a three day ‘solar eclipse’ in September. The problem is that the comet has been dropped from the cut and pasting. The story has completely morphed from a comet eclipsing the sun to a brown dwarf and a ‘solar eclipse’. When you ask people about how a solar eclipse could happen for three days, they can’t tell you, and they never mention the comet.

Like I say, the story has changed from a comet comes between the sun and the earth to, the moon will eclipse the sun for three days in September. Here is a look at the geometry problems with that idea, just as a thought experiment.

The moon comes between the sun and the earth every month, but not every new moon is an eclipse, since the moon can be as much as 5 degrees from the ecliptic (the sun’s apparent position) at any time. Only when the moon is on the ecliptic at a new moon do eclipses happen. The solar eclipse is scheduled to happen in November and not September.

Remember that the moon is moving from right to left around the earth, so it approaches the sun from the right. The moon moves an average of 13 degrees a day as seen from the earth, so in 3 days it moves about 40 degrees. In that time, the earth moves about 3 degrees around the sun. In order for a 3 day eclipse of the sun by the moon to happen, the moon will have to move to the ecliptic and follow the earth exactly around the sun. 

In order for it to stop eclipsing the sun, the moon would then have to move on from that stationary position. People who have altered the story from a comet moving between the sun and earth for three days to there will be a 3 day solar eclipse do not know a thing about the astronomical  geometry that is involved.

Remember that  in order for an object to eclipse the sun as seen from the earth, it has to be right on the ecliptic. Read this from Sky&Telescope about the comet’s path: 

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/112431829.html

“The comet’s elongation from the Sun shrinks to just 1° following perihelion, but soon thereafter the comet gets enough separate to position itself nicely for viewing in the predawn sky.” Meaning that the comet comes to within one degree of the sun as seen from the earth, as the comet makes its perhelion or close approach to the sun.

That is, it will be too close to the sun to be seen like the moon, Venus and all other bodies. BUT, “Moreover, it’s traveling very near the ecliptic plane, and as it sweeps close to the Sun its sky location won’t stray far from the ecliptic until mid-September, when the path arcs slowly northwestward through Leo. That’s a plus for skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere”.

This means that after mid-September the comet MOVES AWAY FROM the ecliptic so that viewers in the Northen Hemisphere can see it. If it is NOT near enough to the sun, it can’t eclipse the sun.