Comet ISON Fireballs Are Raining Down On Earth!

No, they’re not. Really, they’re not.

Although, if you believed everything you watched on YouTube or read on Twitter, Facebook and the “alternative” forums and blogs, you might think that –

But hang on! What about all the reports of fireballs at the moment? They’re everywhere!

Well, yes, there are lots of reports of fireballs at the moment, but a) not a great deal more than usual, and b) they have no connection to Comet ISON at all –

Ha! How do you know?

…because the sky is now monitored very, very closely for fireballs, not just by one group but by many, and if a piece of space rock is observed burning up as it streaks through the sky in a fireball by more than one of these groups the previous orbit of that space rock around the Sun can be calculated, telling us where it came from. If we were being bombarded by debris from Comet ISON those pieces of debris would all be following the same path around the Sun – Comet ISON’s path – but that’s not what we’re seeing. THIS is what we’re seeing…

That chart shows the paths of objects around the Sun which produced fireballs on January 14th. See? All came from different direct directions. No link to ISON.

So, yet again, people who are, at best, totally ignorant about science or are, at worst, deliberately trying to scare and frighten people, are posting utter, utter BS about Comet ISON. If you see a YouTube post or read a Tweet or post on a blog or forum telling you that debris from Comet ISON is raining down on us, a) it’s not, and b) the person who said that is talking total rubbish, either because they just don’t understand the science behind it, or are trying to scare you. Don’t let them. Just remember that these are the same conspiracy theory nutters and fruit loops who predicted oh so confidently that Comet ISON would hit and destroy the Earth, or seed it with plague, or lead to civil unrest, or trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. None of those things happened. Just remember that the people spreading this rubbish about Comet ISON fireballs are the same whackos who insisted that Comet ISON was a UFO, or a fleet of 3 UFOs, or an alien biosphere full of extraterrestrial ambassadors. Just remember that that the people making these YouTube videos are the same fruit loops who posted videos claiming ISON had turned Mars into a comet, complete with green glowing coma.

They were all wrong, and they were all lying.

And did any of these people apologise for getting it TOTALLY WRONG or LYING when ISON was proven to be JUST A COMET, as scientists had been saying all along? Of course not, don’t be silly.

They’re nutters, seriously. Don’t believe a word they say.

But what about a meteor shower? Will we see one of those?

Ah, now that’s a different matter. We were hopeful that we might see some shooting stars when Earth passed through Comet ISON’s dusty trail, but that now looks unlikely. Why? Well, I’ll let my fellow ISON observer Ian Musgrave explain in his brilliant blog post…

So, please, if you’re worried about fireballs raining down from the sky from what’s left of Comet ISON, don’t be. There’s depressingly little going on now. When Comet ISON fell apart as it rounded the Sun all that was left was a very thin cloud of very small grains of dust, so thin and small that searches by the most dedicated, skilful and patient amateur astronomers in the world, using kick ass telescopes and computers, have turned up nothing, NOTHING. And what’s left of ISON isn’t even anywhere near us, it’s way out of our planet’s orbital plane. This picture shows you what I mean by that…

See how high “above” Earth Comet ISON – or what’s left of it – is? So we’re not going to encounter whatever’s left of ISON, it’s now nowhere near us. And any ISON dust we do encounter now is “vintage” dust, i.e. it was released before the comet rounded the Sun, and, as Ian explains in his blog post, ISON was an unusually ‘undusty’ comet, so there’s not much stuff to go through anyway.

Comet ISON is gone, folks. Let it go. Get out under the sky on the next clear night, look up at the stars, and enjoy the beauty of the universe as it is. There’s no need to decorate or corrupt it with tall tales of fireballs, UFOs or rubbish like that.