million miles or 0.233 AU) from our planet.This is more than 90 times further than the Moon is from the Earth. 6.As Elenin will not hit Earth, some have claimed instead that its gravitational effect on the Earth's interior will cause earthquakes and similar cataclysms on our planet, offering the recent disasters in New Zealand and Japan as harbingers of the horrors to come. This is nonsense.I estimate the comet's nucleus to have a mass of about 20 billion tonnes, which is vast in human terms, minute in astronomical terms.Compared to the gravitational effects of the Moon and other planets, Elenin's effects will be immeasurably small.In fact, Dear Reader, your gravitational influence on the Earth as you sit reading these words is greater than Comet Elenin's will be at its strongest! 7.Since it will not strike Earth, or shake up the Earth's crust, other doomsayers state as though they actually know something that the comet's magnetic field will pull our planet off its axis.Not only does magnetism not work like that, but comets (chunks of ice and rock, remember) do not have any magnetic field! Comet Holmes seen by the Hubble Space telescope in autumn 2007, at its best Elenin may resemble this.(Image credit:NASA) 8.Astronomers are not expecting much from Elenin.At its brightest, Comet Elenin will be a far from spectacular sight.It will be a dim object just on the edge of visibility to the unaided eye even in the darkest sky.Binoculars will show it as a faint milky smudge