Unless they were in a highly elliptical orbit with an apopsis closest to Earth.
No. Even a large cometary coma would be far too dim to be viewed from this distance, especially when viewed from OUTSIDE the system where the coma and tail will both appear more as shadowed regions than illuminated ones.
They certainly could, if the comet was -- again -- in a highly elliptical orbit.
For the record, my understanding is that no comet in history has ever been detected in a circular orbit; eccentric orbits is sort of their thing. Planetssimals and largish asteroids are rarely found in such highly eccentric orbits mainly because such orbits tend to be highly unstable; the object either falls into the star, is ejected from the system, or stabilized into a circular orbit by interaction with other planets.
The only reason there are so many comets in such weird orbits is because there's more OF them.
This only applies to circular orbits. Again, to the best of my knowledge there is no record of any comet actually achieving a completely (or even mostly) circular orbit.
"Larger" than what? A smaller-than-expected object that sublimated completely could account for the exact same event.
OTOH, you're assuming the seperate events were all caused by the same objects. This is not something anyone has proposed. A "swarm" of comets means exactly that: a large number of separate bodies, each one responsible for a different drop in luminosity.
This only applies to circular orbits. Again, to the best of my knowledge there is no record of any comet actually achieving a completely (or even mostly) circular orbit.
The transit data is suggesting that highly elliptical orbits did not take place.
On this chart I have outlined all of the major dims prior to the 15% dim and directly afterwards. I should probable go back and outline the events that took place right before the 15% as well.
https://www.facebook.com/641915669282915/photos/p.655736927900789/655736927900789/?type=3&theater
Dims #2,3,5,6,8 and 10 are all basically transiting the same, meaning that the object orbited KIC 8462 on average of 83.3333 days. How did I get this number? I divided 500 days by the number of transits made by the object that caused a similar dim of between .0015 to .0025. Mercury orbits our Sun in only 88 days and travels at velocity of 112,000 mph through space.
Comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko travels through space at 84,000 mph orbiting the Sun further than Mars and sometimes as close as Earth.
http://www.space.com/31932-comet-tails-comas-and-nuclei-oh-my.html
KIC 8462 is about 1.57 times larger than our own Sun (Jason Wright, et. al,? A late tale from the mouse who drives a teal mousy car?) The object would in my opinion based on the data have a velocity that is faster than Mercury as it takes five days less on average to orbit KIC 8462 which is larger than our Sun which might put the object closer in orbit around KIC 8462 and could be the same size as Mercury or could be smaller than Mercury.
Mercury speeds around the sun every 88 Earth days, traveling through space at nearly
112,000 mph (180,000 kph), faster than any other planet. Its oval-shaped orbit is
highly elliptical, taking Mercury as close as 29 million miles (47 million km) and as far as 43 million miles (70 million km) from the sun.Nov 4, 2014.
Mercury has a highly elliptical oval shaped orbit.
My opinion for Object 2356810 is that it is a planet with a highly ellipitcal orbit similar to Mercury's, might be slightly smaller or the same size as Mercury but is traveling through space faster than Mercury is.
Like you mentioned Crazy E, Kepler probably wouldn't even be able to determine if the object was a comet. From what I have read about Kepler is that the mission has not yet discovered any comets but is geared towards finding exoplanets. Ruling out comets because none have been discovered by Kepler yet then the last two implications of KIC 8462 would either be planets or an alien civilization.
Planets will transit across a sun based an algorithm. The algorithm of KIC 8462 is strange because Object 235680 and the other objects prior to the 15% dim all have a regular and repeating variable that can be seen on the charts for KIC 8462 that should have continued across the entire time line that KIC 8462 was being monitored.
Another opinion that has not yet been discussed is that a cloud similar to our Oort Cloud could be orbiting KIC 8462 which the dims could have been caused by Kepler being in a chance alignment to catch comets from the KIC Oort Cloud, if it exists, passing between Kepler and KIC 8462. Which would be great because if such a cloud like Oort existed around KIC 8462 then the possibility of a planet similar to Earth might exist as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud