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The "Fachgruppe Kometen" is the German comet section of the German
astronomical club
Vereinigung
der Sternfreunde e.V. (VdS)
The main interest of the VdS-Fachgruppe Kometen is to support all amateurs interested in the observation of comets and in the analysis of the estimates. The most important tool are our web pages. Here you can find information about current comets, news about discoveries and other occurences our observation results and images.
The Fachgruppe publishes the
newsletter Schweifstern (an old german word for comet) four times per
year. The "Schweifstern" contains the latest information of all
currently observable comets, for example discovery circumstances, light
curves, finding star maps, ephemeris, orbital elements or comparison
star charts. In addition the newsletter contains tables of visual,
photographic and CCD-observations, photographs, letters to the editors
and other interesting facts.
An important objective of the Fachgruppe Kometen is the publication of reports
for all comets for which a significant number of observations exist. These are
prepared by interested members and published in "Sterne und Weltraum",
VdS-Journal or "Ahnerts Astronomisches Jahrbuch". Preliminary analysis for the
currently visible comets can be found on these WWW-pages. Every observation of
our groupwill be stored in the COBS archive.
The Fachgruppe Kometen has issued the free guide Einstieg in die visuelle Kometenbeobachtung for beginners and for advanced amateurs the publication "Anleitung zur visuellen und fotografischen Kometenbeobachtung". Profound informations about comet observation and analysis could be found in the book "Kometen beobachten" (editors Andreas Kammerer and Mike Kretlow), which, however, is no longer available. The Fachgruppe Kometen has worked working on a PDF-file which contains the essential parts of the book. In 2013 the book Kometen - Eine Einführung für Hobby-Astronomen was released. All publications are in German.
The Fachgruppe Kometen has established several sub-divisions:
About every three to five years the Fachgruppe Kometen organises a specific meeting. In addition the Fachgruppe Kometen is involved in the organisation of the "Planeten- und Kometentagung", which takes place once a year.
Are you interested? Please look at our information sheet and registration form (in German), or alternatively by sending E-Mail to Uwe Pilz ("Contact").