COMETS AND COMPUTERS

As we reported in our last newsletter (January, 1983), a computer was very instrumental in the early recovery of Halley’s Comet on October 16, 1982.  Not only in the recovery, but in the predicted ephemeris as detailed in Donald Yeoman’s COMET HALLEY HANDBOOK.  Computers will be very much involved in the recovery of information on Halley’s Comet in 1985 and 1986.  But even the amateur astronomer will be able to take advantage of computer-generated information on his or her personal home computer.  One of our correspondents has recently written a program in BASIC which determines where to look for Halley’s Comet from anywhere in the world.  The results from this program agree within .01 degrees of the numbers predicted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  His program can be adapted to run on any home computer that can be programmed in BASIC.   The program is called “COMET’ and also includes orbital elements for the comet “Tempel 2” which returns to our solar system this year.  The program can track any other comet for which the user has accurate orbital information.

          If any of our members are interested in further information about this service, they may contact us or write directly to David Eagle, 3759 76^th St., S.W., Byron Center, MI 49315.