Hunting and Imaging Comets

by Mobberley, Martin

• ISBN13: 9781441969040
• ISBN10: 1441969047
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

For many astronomers, the holy grail of observation is to discover a comet, not least because comets always bear the name of their discoverer! Hunting and Imaging Comets was written for comet hunters and digital imagers who want to discover, rediscover, monitor, and make pictures of comets using astronomical CCD cameras and DSLRs. The old days of the purely visual comet hunter are pretty much over, but this is not to say that amateurs have lost interest in finding comets.The books also covers the discovery of comet fragments in the SOHO image data, CCD monitoring of older comets prone to violent outbursts, the imaging of new NEOs (Near Earth Objects) that have quite often been revealed as comets - not asteroids - by amateur astronomers, and the finding of recent comets impacting Jupiter.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. v
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Comets, Their Orbits, and Where They Hide!	p. 1
Great Comet Discoveries Throughout History	p. 33
Professional Twenty-First Century Comet Hunters	p. 83
Amateur Twenty-First Century Comet Hunters	p. 101
Finding the Next Hale-Bopp with your Gear	p. 127
Comets that Have Been Missed by the Pros	p. 157
Recovering Returning Periodic Comets	p. 177
Discovering Comets Using Soho	p. 203
Following the NEOs That Might Become Comets	p. 215
Monitoring Outbursting Comets	p. 229
Comet Imaging Techniques	p. 251
Lenses, Telescopes, Astrographs, and Mountings	p. 311
Imaging Comets Remotely and via the Internet	p. 331
Comet Photometry	p. 339
A Few of the World's Keenest Comet Imagers	p. 367
Appendix	p. 383
Index	p. 389
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