A Cocktail in Space – Comet Lovejoy

by Marilyn Muir, LPMAFA

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Here is a quick update on several of my previous celestial articles:

  • Messing with the Moon Stirring up Emotion
  • Crash of the Comet – Was Jupiter Changed
  • Comet Tails…Is There a Dragon Upon Us? Elenin Cometh
  • Comet Tales (Tails) and Meteor Showers
  • Mars Upfront and Personal: War, Fear and Terror

When humanity makes the invisible visible, we make the unconscious conscious. What does that mean? After all, we are astrologers and are supposed to interpret in terms of experience all of this new stuff astronomy and science are discovering. For example:

Moon: For most of our existence, humanity could not see the back side of the Moon and metaphorically, that means the emotions represented by such invisibility were unconscious to humanity. Once we laid eyes on whatever type of non-visible and therefore unconscious emotions which were hidden, we uploaded that nonsense into our everyday lives. Now that we can see it, society has to deal with it, but I have not noticed much success with that so far, have you? Science made it visible… and astrologers have to interpret it.

Mars: In recent years we have gotten up close and personal with Mars and its two satellites: Phobos and Deimos. Not only did we set Mars as a target for our satellites, but we actually traveled there, orbited it, took photos, then crash landed on it. You don’t suppose that might be misconstrued as an attack, do you?  Not being satisfied with that, we again landed on it, this time with a little more control. Our rovers walked around on it (to date), collected samples from it, and more flights investigated its Moons in greater detail. As if that were not up close and personal enough for the moment, on August 27, 2003, the orbit of Mars swung in closer to the Earth (opposition) than it had been since 57,617 B.C. That means Mars (the mythological god of war) and its two moons (fear and terror) were closer (stronger) to us. It will be 2287 before it swings in close again. Since 2003, that news story has been repeated online as if it were current. It is not current. Is it just me, or does the concept of the god of war and its two minions, fear and terror, sound anything like what has been going on in the world for the last few years? Science made it visible… astrologers have to interpret it.

Comet: A few years ago, we chased a comet, caught up to it and crashed a space capsule to get info about it, and then took photos of the whole thing. 83 million miles away, we did a bullseye on a comet. I voiced concern over whether the comet might return the favor. In those articles, I also mentioned that as the comets swing in for the perihelion turn around our Sun, the melting comet sloughs off gases, dust and moisture evidenced by the comet’s tail. This is often dumped into the areas through which the planets orbit. As a planet passes through the debris, their gravitational pull “accretes” that debris into the atmosphere, sometimes visible as meteorites, sometimes invisible if gas or vapor. The universe constantly replenishes or nourishes the rocky core planets with new material. Have you ever wondered about evolution, new matters, new lessons? They happen all the time. Halley’s Comet has a 76-year period return so there is constant renewal of that debris field for Earth to pass through and accrete. Who can forget the amazing photos of twenty pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levi 9 crashing into Jupiter one after another with amazing explosive results? A tiny comet took on a behemoth planet and affected that planet.

Enter Comet Lovejoy, which has recently done its passage close to Earth (January 30, 2015) and is headed back out into space. This specific comet is the reason for this update. Lovejoy has left quite an interesting debris field… ethyl alcohol and sugar to name two molecules of the 21 identified – a space cocktail! How did astronomers finally figure out what ingredients make up this comet? They waited until the gasses heated up (outgassing is the comet’s tail) and then read the scientific results. There is a cocktail debris field out there in our local space and Earth (and its inhabitants – us) are going to be rotating and orbiting our way through it until it returns with a refill in about 622 years according to one source. To be sure, there are comets that never survive perihelion, passing too close to the Sun itself to survive. Lovejoy has visited us before. It survived its close encounter with our Sun, this time passing through the Sun’s corona.  That means its trajectory may have changed along with its periodicity. Lovejoy does plan to visit us again.

The name Lovejoy is certainly appropriate for its ingredients even though it is actually named for its discoverer, Australian Terry Lovejoy. According to the Paris Observatory, Comet Lovejoy is outgassing 500 bottles of wine per second. We get to spin our way through this debris field. Will we become inebriated? Sillier? More social? Braver or have more bravado? Just what lesson has the Universe provided us this time? Come on astrologers… we get to interpret this as well as participate in the party and perhaps prepare for the next one.

Resources:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/us/comet-lovejoy-spews-alcohol/index.html

For real-time, live data on Lovejoy and other comets, go to: http://www.livecometdata.com/comets/c2014-q2-comet-lovejoy/

Messing with the Moon Stirring up Emotion (AFA v75#6)

Crash of the Comet – Was Jupiter Changed? (AllThingsHealing) (E-zine 3147526)

Comet Tails…Is There a Dragon Upon Us? Elenin Cometh! (AllThingsHealing)

Comet Tales (Tails) and Meteor Showers (AllThingsHealing)

Mars Upfront and Personal: War, Fear and Terror (AllThingsHealing) (E-zine 3177224)

Published in AFA Today’s Astrologer Feb 2016. Vol 78#2, republished with slight editing.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.