Ebook: Hunting and Imaging Comets

Chapter Three: Professional Twenty-First Century Comet HuntersThe NEO Connection; LINEAR; NEAT; The JPL Observing System; The Catalina, Siding Spring andMount Lemmon Sky Survey's; Siding Spring; Mt. Lemmon; The Spacewatch Patrol; LONEOS; La Sagra Sky Survey; Chapter four: Amateur Twenty-First Century Comet Hunters; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2009; The Edgar Wilson Award; Chapter five: Finding the Next Hale-Bopp with your Gear; Searching for the Next KreutzSungrazer; Comet Discovery asa Secondary Aim; Astrometry; Blink Comparators; Reporting a Discovery.;Lessons from Hale-BoppVisual Sweeping Techniques; Sometimes you Just Get Lucky!; Chapter six: Comets that Have Been Missed by the Pros; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2009; Beating the Pro's: Conclusions; Future Threats; Chapter seven: Recovering Returning Periodic Comets; 1P/Halley; Tsutomu Seki; 85P/Boethin; The Remarkable Recoveryof 109P/Swift-Tuttle; The Mystery Remains; A Threat to the Earth?; Going Faint; 2009 Recoveries; P/2001 CV8 (LINEAR); P/2004 K2 (McNaught); P/2002 JN16 (LINEAR); 127P/Holt-Olmstead; P/2004 X1 (LINEAR); P/2002 S1 (Skiff).;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.;C/1577 V1: The Great Cometof 1577C/1680 V1: Kirch's Cometof 1680; C/1743 X1: de Chéseaux' Cometof 1744; C/1811 F1: The Great Cometof 1811; C/1843 D1: The Great MarchComet of 1843; C/1858 L1 (Donati); C/1861 J1: The Great Cometof 1861; C/1882 R1: The GreatSeptember Comet of 1882; 1P/Halley and the DaylightComet C/1910 A1; C/1927 X1 (Skjellerup-Maristany); C/1947 X1 and 1948 XI; C/1956 R1 (Arend-Roland)and C/1957 P1 (Mrkos); C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki); Comet C/1969 Y1 (Bennett); C/1975 V1 (West); C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake); C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp); C/2006 P1 (McNaught); Fear, Awe and Nutters!.;P/2003 XD10 (LINEAR-NEAT)P/2002 T1 (LINEAR); P/2009 R2 (Kowalski) = 226P/Pigott-LINEAR-Kowalski; P/2004 EW38; P/2001 YX127; Recovery Conclusions; Back from the Grave!; Chapter eight: Discovering Comets Using SOHO; SWAN Comets; The LASCO Detector; Leading Amateur SOHO Discoverers; C/1998 J1 (SOHO); Chapter Nine: Following the NEOs That Might Become Comets; Comet Naming Rules; Asteroids That Became Comets; Dual-Status Objects; A Remarkable UK Amateur; Comets Among the AsteroidPopulation; Chapter TEN: Monitoring Outbursting Comets; 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann; 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann.;Hunting and Imaging Comets; Preface; Acknowledgements; About the Author; Contents; Chapter one: Comets, Their Orbits, and Where They Hide!; Cometary Tails and Structure; Anti-tails; Short and Long Periods; 200 or 341 Years?; The Ecliptic Plane; Magnitude Formulae; Orbital Elements; Anti-tail Prospects; Constructing a Cardboard Model of a Cometary Orbit; Short Period Orbits; Long Period Orbits; The Kreutz Family; Beyond Parabolic: Hyperbolic!; Chapter two: Great Comet Discoveries Throughout History; Great Comet Criteria; 1P/Halley; X/1106 C1: The GreatComet of 1106.