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This page provides links to the cometary observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute maintains an excellent archive of all the observations, with on-the-fly calibration using the latest calibration parameters. Because of the way in which individual observers designate their targets, the search programs for HST sometimes find only a subset of the cometary observations. The SBN does not archive any data from HST, but this page may assist scientists in finding the desired observations in the HST archive. The listing is, as far as we know, complete through May 2004. The list is updated periodically. Note that some of the most recent observations may still be in their proprietary period and thus not downloadable.
At present, the list merely allows you to locate comets by name and designation (sorted alphabetically). Note that the comets are always identified by a designation (a periodic comet number if one exists, otherwise a discovery designation) and a name. Names of periodic comets are unique (see the discussion at our periodic comets page.) but the names of non-periodic comets are not. In the future we will add observations of asteroids and add the capability of searching through the SBN database. The detailed lists of all observations will also be expanded to include key parameters of the observations including the instrument and mode, the geocentric and heliocentric distances, and so on.
The table of observations for each comet has a "Dataset ID" column, which represents the identification value in the STSCI archive. Each value starts with a letter, which represents the instrument in the Hubble Space Telescope that was used for observation. The following list relates each letter to the instrument:
Instrument Name
Identification Letter
Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS)
F
Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)
J
Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS)
N
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS)
O
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
U
High Speed Photometer (HSP)
V
Wide Field Planetary Camera 1 (WFPC1)
W
Faint Object Camera (FOC)
X
Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS)
Y
Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS)
Z
The table contains a "Mark" column with entry value of either blank or "@" indicating whether the observations are still in the proprietary period and may not be downloadable. The table also has a column for "Start Time", which specifies the starting time of the observations for the comet (GMT).
The alphabetical listing of the comets:
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Last updated: March 04, 2009 by Parin Choganwala