Comet ISON(Update 2)/Phaethon: Rock Comet

 Phaethon by Gustave Moreau (1878)

Apparently the idea of Comet ISON has captured a lot of people's imagination, as it's all over the news, and now people want to watch a live feed on November 28th (Thanksgiving Day in the United States) to see if NASA (or anyone else in the space biz) can tell if ISON has indeed survived its brush with the Sun...

It's all a bit of outer space drama, absolutely. And fascinating to watch. An object out there which is billions of years old is about to have what may be its ultimate fateful encounter with a star. And we humans pretty much get to watch.

That's dramatic.

The whole thing is dramatic - and thus it represents (to us) something which is 'dramatic' or which has some evocative or (for you perhaps) emotional meaning. Or maybe it just promotes some feeling response. Good or bad, whether your instinct is to sit and listen or run away or ignore some learned habit to second-guess yourself,  Comet ISON is about all that which has just in this past little while (generally speaking) shown up in your world. Arriving unexpectedly and totally capable of rattling the windows, chains or foundations of anyone's world (whether it does is about your individual chart) ISON represents some idea, some knowing, some totally unexpected and probably unheralded perspective which has come to be - by whatever measures - injected into our lives.

Will ISON 'impact' the Sun? And to the extent that it does, does that limit the effect of whatever ISON's appearing out of the vastness of the unknown has manifested as in each of our lives?

Over the past few days the solar wind gave ISON a buffeting. But the comet got past. Unlike Encke - which got its tail 'cut off' by a like encounter with a solar CME back in 2007.

Whatever was 'out there' in our lives is still out there. For a day or two it seemed to waver...but it's still on course.

Evidently life wants us to continue feeling this issue in some ever-increasing sort of 'obvious to us' (if nobody else) sort of way.

Scientists are saying that ISON is an object about the size of a shopping center made of rock and ice. That's nothing the Sun couldn't simply absorb in a moment... which by implication says that whatever it is which is so 'foreign' to us, we could absorb it. Yet instead we're treating as some 'strange thing' which has shown up in our world. It's of our solar system - our life environment. And yet for some reason, we've never seen it. It's never registered in our (solar) consciousness - at least not to the degree that we've noticed it.

Until now, that is.

From the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's home page for November 27, SOHO images

of comets Encke and ISON heading towards Earth.

To see this film clip in full, link to JPL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

  

Whatever is working its way through your life, your psyche, it's probably not simple. It's probably not even made up of one single issue or item or factor or possible priority or concern. We probably all knew that, but once NASA piped up and let us know that another comet (Encke) had reached its perihelion (near approach point to the Sun) on November 21st (last Saturday) that made it plain. After all, Encke is a comet, but it's a near (short-period) comet - one which cycles from just shy of Jupiter to the think of Mercury's orbit, marking a 3.3 year sub-cycle of personal growth and challenge.


And now...?

Proving that our universe (even our solar system) is nothing if not entirely capable of surprising us with what we don't know (which maybe is a hint for people to stop acting like such know-it-all's?), today NASA released a new piece of information on asteroid Phaethon.

In short, Phaethon is not "merely" an asteroid. It's a comet without a tail.

Link to: SCIENCE @ NASA (Nov. 27)

If you link to NASA's typically friendly 'chat' on this subject, what you'll learn - among other things - is that Phaethon is the source of the Geminids, one of Earth's yearly meteor showers...the next one up on the calendar, as life would have it. The Geminids begin on December 7th and run through the 17th with a peak hourly rate (of falling meteors) on December 13/14.

And just to make this interesting, the 17th is the date that Uranus goes direct AND of December's Full Moon.

Think what happens in your 'now' could affect your 'then'? Quite possibly so. If so, the 'active' process which will get you to that place...which you may well be thinking about now...would begin on December 3rd.

Why?

Because December 3rd is the date of December's NEW Moon - that which starts in motion whatever it is which either culminates, is discarded, adapted or integrated into a new phase at the FULL Moon.

With me?

So now we're thinking. We're realizing. We're contemplating. (And if you're American, you're probably also getting ready for that annual pumpkink-cranberry-turkey fest thing.)

A time-lapse photograph of the Geminid meteor shower over

Brasstown, Bald Mountain (Georgia) by NASA

The really quirky thing here is the Phaethon part...which is really what got me into writing this post. This Phaethon news isn't really "new news" - the European Space Agency issued the press release on Phaethon's rock-comet-hood back in September.

 Link to: European Planetary Science

Congress Release 2013

But that NASA would bring this up as part of its tightly-packed set of releases regarding all things ISON with the understanding that in our temporal life we are about to go from ISON to the New Moon to the Geminid meteor shower and on into Uranus' station/direct at the Full Moon - all of which then culminates in the Capricorn Solstice at the moment of Venus' turn to retrograde?

There is a whole world of business and economics out there which could probably profit (literally) from taking note of what lies ahead. The New Moon will be in Sagittarius, so we're trying to move ahead. Some will be in that trying to leave something else behind, but no matter - we're trying to move ahead and get on with life and living.

And as we do, all those little 'dapples' of light, those 'sparks' of streaming insight streak across our mindful sky.

Thus we will arrive at change - a shift which leads either to disappointment and retreat or a consolidating of those dearly held values and assets which we as individuals... we as humans... hold dear.

But first, we have to confront the fact that life is not black and white. Into all that ISON's appearing has manifested as, into all that Encke's reaching its perihelion has caused us to realize about who we are, who others may or may not be and the difference between daily matters and relationships, feelings and efforts which last a lifetime....

...into all that has come knowing Phaethon is not simply an asteroid, and it's not what we know as a comet.

It's something else. It's something new. We need to rethink or retool.

An asteroid 'as' comet would be something we wrestle with until it 'brings us' understanding. On the other hand, a comet 'as' an intermittent life challenge simply tells us we are never done learning - and for some of us, yes - that is news!

Beyond that is the realizing that we are being 'notified' of 'new things under the Sun' and how we don't know  everything which exists or how everything comes to exist. Or to be what it is.

And that fits too. How so? Well, as an astrological symbol, Phaethon is hasty. Its myth is all about a very bull-headed teen demi-god of the 'don't tell me I can't do that' sort.

(Okay, so that's every teenager on the planet, granted. And most teens think they can go around acting like demi-gods, yes. But you get my point.)

And now that the 'asteroid' we have known as Phaethon is not what we thought it was, what created that haste? Where did it really come from?

Also interesting: the mythic Phaethon came to his (teen, demi-god) end because he thought (prematurely, hasty boy that he was) that he was capable of controlling the chariot of the Sun.

In other words, life. (Or our mentality - the Sun also rules consciousness.)

So while we're watching Comet ISON dive in towards the Sun we also are being told that what has driven our haste...or our conviction...it isn't what we thought it was?

What does that say about us? 

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Update: Two Comets, Not One (ISON and Encke)

A screen shot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's November 25, 2013 home page posting on comets ISON and Encke

(image courtesy of JPL-Caltech-NASA)

Just when you think you’re up to date, NASA drops out of the black of space with new news. And this time, there’s even film.

No, not some film made by aliens (although that sounds like fun!). And no, not film of some well meaning science type delivering facts (or phaques, if you’re feeling ultra-liberal in the spelling department).

So what's on said film?

Answer: another comet.

That’s right…ISON has company, which is a rather nice thought. After all, comets spend so much of their time whizzing through the empty vastness of space…and here on Planet Earth, it’s the beginning of the holidays. So who among us would deny a wandering comet a little company?

For those of you who have just fallen off your chair (or couch) laughing, I’ll wait a moment. And for those who are thinking perhaps a butterfly net big enough for an astrologer is needed here, hold up.

I really do have a point. It’s quick, it’s simple – and for those who think they never get to see astrology and science in synchronous parallel, it’s really rather grand.

So if you’re interested, start with the link I’m about to give you. It links to JPL…and when you watch the seriously short (seconds long) film clip the link will lead you to, watch for two things: comets moving left to right and the ‘breath’ of the solar wind moving right to left.

Link to: JPL-CALTECH-NASA

I can’t tell you all that much about Encke. The name of the comet comes from Johann Franz Encke, the fellow who calculated its orbit back in 1819 – which argues for good math skills, but not much else.

(For the record, I’m a math geek, so that’s not really a criticism. Far from it, actually.)

What I can tell you about with regards to Comet Encke however, is that this is not one of the long-period comets like Halley, which every 75.3 years comes to visit us from on beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt. Halley, Swift-Tuttle (source of the Persied Meteor shower) and Thatcher (source of the Lyrid Meteor shower) all come to us from a realm which metaphysically is about that we don’t know – that which has never occurred to us.

Not so with Encke. Encke doesn’t take 75 years to come around like Halley, and it certainly doesn’t disappear for 415 years between visits like Thatcher.

No, Encke is a whole other kind of comet critter, one which originates inside of Jupiter.

That’s right…Encke is a comet which originates in the asteroid belt. And if we remember that the asteroid belt represents all those many things which we have to ‘meet up with’ and learn about or deal with on our way from motivation or initiation (Mars) to what we might call the Jupiter ‘mastery’ point (or at least the dawning of having a clue as to what you’re doing and how to get it done), then Encke – an object with a perihelion (inner orbital) point smack dab in the crux of Mercury’s orbit – Encke would seem to represent some sort of information or those challenges which seem to come to us on a ‘cyclic’ basis as we are trying to do something, achieve some goal or figure out how to get something done.

The link to Mercury makes this very much about what we do/how we do what we do…and/or how we think and/or communicate. (Or not, of course. Do – not do. Communicate – not communicate. There always is the possibility of the polarity.)

However…as we think of this, then we add in that Encke reached its perihelion just days ago – on November 21st. So we’ve just had the Encke cycle of ‘bringing to us’ reach it’s ‘reaching us’ point.

But what does that mean?

Two more things to add in here. One is (of course) the fact that ISON is also involved in this period of time we’re all living through. And we’re all trying to sort through what (Sun in Sagittarius) needs doing and what we (Sun in Sagittarius) need to keep on dealing with…despite however we feel about it, here in the wake of this powerful, emotional time we’ve just been through.

But if you saw that film JPL posted, then you also know that the solar wind – the breath of the Sun, as one might very poetically call it – is flowing towards both comets. Back in 2007 (two 3.3 year Encke cycles ago) this same thing happened and literally ‘broke off’ Encke’s tail.

Does this tell us just how powerful our intent and essential being really is? Do we benefit or rob ourselves of the opportunity to be something we’ve never dreamed of by insisting on our own perspective – the ‘brilliance’ of our thinking and the strength of our will?

The scientists are poised with all their equipment, but we don’t know what will happen yet. This all seems to paint something of a metaphysical picture with Encke representing our personal challenges and aims while the Sun represents our consciousness and ability to focus on or deal with life/our life.

And somehow all of this is bound in with something totally strange, totally foreign which comes closes to us on November 28th - Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

Does this mean we will see that which we thought we would never see? Does it mean that something will have finally come close enough or clear enough that we understand it?

We seem to be being posed with a lot of questions right now. But that’s apt enough – certainly one of Sagittarius’ greatest functions in our life is to keep us green and growing, whether that means confronting us with questions, trying our patience or insecurities or giving us opportunities we can’t resist but hardly know how to wrap our minds around.

That’s most likely the point.  Life never tries to thwart us or puzzle us to no end, merely to stimulate us into learning that which will ultimately allow us to grow, utilize our potential and thrive. That 'thriving' may not look or sound like we think it should...

But then, whose universe is it?
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