Lowell Observatory Cometary Database

The database presented here is comprised entirely of observations made utilizing conventional photoelectric photometers and narrowband filters isolating 5 emission species (OH, NH, CN, C3 and C2) and continua. This work was initiated by A'Hearn and Millis in 1976 and includes 2020 observations of 85 comets obtained over 429 nights through the end of 1992. The total number of observations, however, is not evenly distributed over the 85 comets. The median number of observations for a comet is 6, with only a single observation obtained for 14 comets while there were 820 observations of P/Halley. The majority of observations were obtained at either Lowell Observatory or Perth Observatory, however four other observatories were used including an extensive campaign on comet P/Halley from the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO). In this archive, results for a subset of 68 comets are presented while the results for P/Halley from this study are archived in the IHW archive.