The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars

The Greatest Comets of History is unique. There are a few books on comets that make passing reference to some of the famous and spectacular objects of earlier years, and a few descriptive catalogues are available, but little detailed descriptive information is contained in either of these sources. This book fills the vacant niche that exists between general books, academic (and often cryptic) catalogues, and huge detailed catalogues such as Kronk's Cometography. The Greatest Comets of History is a detailed descriptive account - in non-technical language - of what are deemed to have been the most spectacular and notable comets ever recorded, beginning with ??~Aristotle's Comet' of 372 BC and ending with McNaught's Comet of 2007. Halley's Comet is given a separate chapter and there is an introductory chapter on comets in general, explaining in lay terms what they are and correcting a few popular misconceptions. This is not only a fascinating read for astronomers at every level, but in pulling together a vast amount of information previously available only in disparate academic sources it is a major contribution to the literature.

David Seargent is a former lecturer in Philosophy with the Department of Community Programs at the University of Newcastle in Australia and is now a full-time writer. He is the author of the very popular Comets: Vagabonds of Space (Doubleday), formerly a contributing editor on comets to Sky & Space magazine, and currently author of the regular comet column for Australian Sky & Telescope (the southern hemisphere edition). He was co-author with Joseph Marcus, of a paper published in 1986 entitled "Dust forward scatter brightness enhancement in previous apparitions of Halley’s comet" (Proceedings, 20th. ESLAB Symposium on the Exploration of Halley’s Comet, Vol. 3, B. Battrick, E. J. Rolfe and R. Reinhard, eds. ESA SP-250. European Space Agency Publications). He was also the Australian co-ordinator for visual observations during the International Halley Watch, 1985-6.