At https://spaceweather.com … on October 31st we learnt that Earth was passing through a stream of slow moving Halloween fireballs. This is the origin of Diwali – if you go back far enough. Celtic halloween has the same origin – a long time ago. Guy Fawkes Night came about because the Puritans regarded it as a pagan practise absorbed by Christianity. However, they were unable to stop the peasants and country folk from lighting bonfires near Halloween. So, it was politicised – and an effigy of Guy Fawkes was burnt to make the point. These world wide traditions go back thousands of years, to when Comet Encke was a much bigger and more dangerous cosmic body.
Spaceweather tells us the Halloween fireballs appear to emerge out of the constellation of Taurus. In reality the stars of Taurus are much further away but the stream of meteors, now reduced to shooting stars, was much closer to Earth. Comet Encke had a short orbit that included the inner solar system. Taurus is of course the bull of heaven. Bulls and cows are common animals associated with gods. As are boars and elephants and rhinoceros. The common denominator is they have horns, or appendages – an idea derived from the coma of a comet. Of course, over time these features of the sky have been diluted. Comet Encke is reduced to a shell of its former status. Most of the time it is invisible. Hence, the idea developed that either God had gone away, or he was still up there in the sky, but unseen by human eyes. The cow in Hindu myth developed into the concept of a holy cow – left alone and uneaten. The cow in Egyptian myth had a much more violent side – see the myth of Hathor.
Spaceweather then moves on to Comet 31/ATLAS – the alien comet currently passing through our solar system. At the moment it is behind the Sun and over a few more days yet it will remain invisible to the gaze of humans on the surface of the Earth, as a result of the glare of the Sun. It reached perihelion on October 29th. Coronagraphs on spacecraft have not stopped imaging it. These reveal the comet has a blue colour from glowing gas. In fact, Comet 31/ATLAS has been increasing in brightness since September. This, it is suggested, may be caused by a surge in water subimation. Europe’s JUICE spacecraft will encounter the comet for a clear look on November 2nd. Sunday.
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/10/3i-atlas-water-another-star-system/l … we have another source that tells us that pulses of water from the interior of the comet, are what is happening. Thisd is via a research by Zhang and Battams. The Neil Gehrek Swift Observatory detected ultraviolet light being emitted by 3/ATLAS, signalling the presence of hydroxl gas – a clear indication of water. The comet was releasing water at a rate of 40 kg a second – a high level of activity, apparently.
More on this at https://phys.org/news/2025-10-rapid-brightening-interstellar-comet-3iatlas.html … and at https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2510.25035 … the research paper by Zhang et al.