Comet Observation Home Page
Left: C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp. 1999 March 10.462, sum of 3 60 second exposures. The
dust tail fan continues to be present despite the huge 7.9AU solar
distance. The image is scaled to resemble a view through a large telescope.
Taken from Loomberah NSW Australia with a 45cm f/5.4 Newtonian and AP-7 CCD
( from the Planetary Society Shoemaker NEO grant)
Copyright 1999⌐Gordon Garradd. loomberah@ozemail.com.au
These finder charts for C/1999 M5 (LINEAR) as it moves near Polaris
were provided by Dale Ireland. (Click on image for larger view.)
These orbit diagrams for C/1998 P1 (Williams) and C/1999 A1 (Tilbrook)
were provided by Dale Ireland. (Click on image for larger view.)
Finder chart for C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)
was provided by Dale Ireland. (Click on image for larger view.)
Click here to see previous images
Did you or someone you know see a bright naked-eye comet in the past, but you don't know
which one it is?...This list
will answer your question!
The Edgar
Wilson Award - A new award for (amateur) comet discoverers!!! (link
to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams)
Last Updated 2 April 1999
Over the next few months my time to update the COHP, particularly for posting
images, will be serverely limited. I am working on the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission which is scheduled for launch in September. I will continue to
post images when time permits, but that may be even less frequent than in the
recent past. I still plan to update the observations on a regular basis...csm.
In this home page:
-
Comets Currently
Visible (2/22/99)
-
Recent News and Observations (4/2/99)
-
Comets that
will be Visible in the Near Future (2/23/99)
-
The Bright Comet Chronicles
by John E. Bortle - 200 years of bright comets
-
Ephemerides for Current Visually Observable Comets (12/23/98)
-
Comet Light Curves (5/9/97)
-
Comet Definitions
-
Other Sources of Comet Information
-
Comet Images (7/25/97)
-
Other Pages Featuring Comet Images
-
The People Who Discover Comets
-
NASA Home Page
-
JPL Home Page
Awards
The biggest reward for doing this home page is the positive feedback that
I get and the knowledge that users find this page a useful service.
(Of course, I think it should have received four stars, but I am a bit biased.)
Statistics
Typically, about 1,000 individual users/computers access this page every day. These
accesses create more than 15,000 entries per day in the access log. This
amounts to an increase in the size of the access log of 1.5 Mbytes per day!
However, the peak access rate during the C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) apparition
was >>30,000 users. The peak usage was more than 550,000 hits per day.
Comments? (Please include your
e-mail address. Often times your comments/questions require an individual response. I
can't provide that if I don't know how to contact you!!)
Charles S. Morris / csm@encke.jpl.nasa.gov