Publications for the Comet Observer

The VdS-Fachgruppe Kometen has issued two small publications for comet observers. You can purchase the one for advanced observers by sending six international post coupons to Uwe Pilz, Pöppigstr. 35, D-04349 Leipzig, Germany. The one for beginners is freely available.

The free publication Einstieg in die visuelle Kometenbeobachtung is a guideline for beginners, written in a refreshing style. The guide "Anleitung zur visuellen und fotografischen Kometenbeobachtung" describes the most important methods to observe comets. Following are the contents:

Einstieg in die visuelle Kometenbeobachtung (16 pages)

• Sources of Information
• Instruments
• Finding comets via "star-hopping"
• Magnitude estimation methods (Bobrovnikoff/Sidgwick)
• Comparison Star Catalogues
• Coma Diameter and DC
• Tail Length and Position Angle
• Near-nucleus Phenomena
• Reporting the Observations

Anleitung zur visuellen und fotografischen Kometenbeobachtung (20 pages)

• Visual comet observation:
• Estimation
• Total Magnitude of the Coma
• Sidgwick
• Bobrovnikoff
• Morris
• Comparison Star Catalogues
• Nuclear Magnitude
• Coma Diameter
• via relative distances of stars
• via the drift-method
• via a measuring reticle
• DC
• Tail Length
• Position Angle
• Drawing near-nucleus phenomena
• Report Form for visual observations
• Photography:
• Introduction
• Instruments
• Films and Filters
• Indirect Guiding
• Tail photography
• Photography of the inner coma
• Report Form for photographic observations

Kometen beobachten (310 pages)

Profound information about comet observation could be found in the book Kometen beobachten (Observing Comets) by Andreas Kammerer and Mike Kretlow. This book covered on more than 300 print pages all important aspects of comet observation and analysis (visual, photographic and CCD-observations/analysis, spectroscopy, astrometry etc.). However, this book is no longer available.

During 2007 the editors (mainly Mike Kretlow) created a PDF-version which contains all the material of the original edition, published in 1998. This original issue can be downloaded via the following link.

Version 1998 "Kometen beobachten" (Attention: 16 MB)

It is planned to update this PDF-file irregularly, especially the items which have changed much since 1998. Updated PDF-files will be placed here and can be identified by the version number.