The distance of Comet 209P/Linear's orbit to where the Surface of Earth WILL BE in its orbital plane on May 24, 2014 at 00:00:00 ~ isfrom 863,222.98 miles to 863,243.98 miles on the nearest side,and from 871,116.98 miles to 871,158.98 miles to the opposite side of Earth's orbital plane.
Those numbers decrease my concern level considerably from the
"about 18,600 miles" that I commented on in
comment #56.
That's a lot further out than John Bochanski's article stating
" Detailed calculations of its orbit indicated that in May 2014 the comets debris trails would pass extremely close to Earth(about 0.0002 Earth-Sun distances, ...). "
which figured to be about 18,600 miles.
I didn't get it from JPL's models, but I run
Stellarium 0.12.4 for Earth's distance from the Sun on
May 24, 2014 at 00:00:00 Central Daylight Savings Time as 1.00571510 AU .
It showed Comet 209P/Linear distance from the Sun as it is on the same laditude of Earth's Orbital Plane
on May 20, 2014 at 00:00:00 Central Daylight Savings Time, is 0.99639024 AU.
1.00571510 AU minus
0.99639024 AU equals
0.00932486 AU times (Earth is a distance of 0.36184615 AU from Comet Linear at that time)
93,000,000 miles equals
867,211.98 miles from Earth's Orbital Plane
minus the radius of Earth ( 3,9473,968 mi )
I need to get a copy of Stellarium for myself.
The issue, as I see it with Linear, is the fact that it has broken up. That means there could be some large objects hiding in the dust trail, trailing the main body of debris. Since the earth is crossing through that same trail close behind this main body passage (relatively), it should mean the chances of encountering larger objects in this particular comet's dust trail are greater than normal, or of say a single body comet's trail in which the main nucleus passed months before the earth encounters its dust trail.
No model is going to be able to predict this. It's something we'll just have to wait to see if we do or don't encounter larger objects, unless of course NASA wishes to share radar returns or observations with us. Not likely of that happening if there is something coming our way and they thought it might cause a panic.
There was a comet that we watched breakup some years back (I forget the name now) which now consists of about 60 objects NASA is tracking. The pieces are presently scattered over a trail with millions of miles between the separated chunks.
Which brings up another question in my mind: Why isn't NASA putting out more detailed data on Linear? Just seems kind of strange, if you ask me.
Btw, good work on the numbers!