Krupp, E. C. The Comet and You. Macmillan, New York, 1985. For children.
Littman, Mark, and Donald K. Yeomans. Comet Halley—Once in a Lifetime. American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., 1985.
Moore, Patrick. Comets. Scribner’s, New York, 1976.
Moore, Patrick, and J. Mason. The Return of Halley’s Comet. W. W. Norton, New York, 1984.
Mumford, George. Everyone’s Complete Guide to Halley’s Comet. Sky Publishing Co., Cambridge, 1985.
Pasachoff, Jay M., and Donald H. Menzel. A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets. Chapter 11, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1983.
Rahe, Jurgen, Bertram Donn, and Karl Würm. Atlas of Cometary Forms: Structures Near the Nucleus. NASA Special Publication 198. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1969.
Reddy, F. Once in a Lifetime: Your Guide to Halley’s Comet. Astromedia, Milwaukee, 1985.
Richter, Nikolaus Benjamin. The Nature of Comets. Methuen, London, 1963.
The Royal Institution Library of Science: Astronomy. Vols. 1 and 2, Bernard Lovell, ed. Elsevier, New York, 1970. A compilation of Friday-evening discourses on astronomy at the Royal Institution, London, from the middle nineteenth century, including several interesting early talks on meteors and comets.
Seargent, David A. Comets: Vagabonds of Space. Doubleday, New York, 1982.
Stasiuk, Garry, and Dwight Gruber. The Comet Handbook. Stasiuk Enterprises, 1984.
Wilkening, L., ed. Comets. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1982. While technical, this collection of review papers is the single most comprehensive reference on all aspects of comets now in existence.
Representative Technical Papers Arranged by Chapters
CHAPTER 2
Dreyer, J. L. E. A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1906.
Hasegawa, Ichiro. “Catalogue of Ancient and Naked-Eye Comets.” Vistas in Astronomy 24, 59, 1980.
Hellman, C. Doris. The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy. Columbia University Press, New York, 1944.
Lagercrantz, Sture. “Traditional Beliefs in Africa Concerning Meteors, Comets, and Shooting Stars.” In Festschrift fur Ad. E. Jensen. Klaus Renner Verlag, Munich, 1964.
Leon-Portilla, Miguel, ed. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Beacon Press, Boston, 1962.
Sarton, George. A History of Science, Vol. 1. Harvard University Press, Boston, 1952.
Stein, J., S.J. “Calixte III et la comète de Halley.” Specola Astronomica Vaticana II. Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Rome, 1909.
Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. 4. Columbia University Press, New York, 1934.
Wen wu. “Ma Wang Tui po shu ‘T’ien wen ch’i hsiang tsa chan’ nei jung chien shu” and “Ma Wang Tui Han ts’ao po shu chung to hui hsing t’u,” Wen wu ch’u pan she, Beijing, Vol. 2, pp. 1–9, 1978.
Yoke, Ho Peng. “Ancient and Medieval Observations of Comets and Novae in Chinese Sources.” Vistas in Astronomy 5, 127, 1962.
Ze-zong, Xi. “The Cometary Atlas in the Silk Book of the Han Tomb at Mawangdui.” Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics 8, 1, 1984.
CHAPTER 3
Barker, Thomas. Of the Discoveries Concerning Comets. Whiston and White, London, 1757.
Eddington, Arthur Stanley. “Halley’s Observations on Halley’s Comet, 1682.” Nature 83, 373, 1910.
Freitag, Ruth S. Halley’s Comet: A Bibliography. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1984.
MacPike, Eugene, ed. Correspondence and Papers of Edmond Halley. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1932.
Ronan, Colin. Edmond Halley: Genius in Eclipse. Doubleday, New York, 1969.
Stephenson, F. R., K. K. C. Yao, and H. Hunger. “Records of Halley’s Comet on Babylonian Tablets.” Nature 314, 587, 1985.
Walter, David L. “Medallic Memorials of the Great Comets and the Popular Superstitions Connected with Their Appearance.” Scott Stamp and Coin Company, New York, 1893.
Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980.
White, Andrew Dickson. “A History of the Doctrine of Comets.” Papers of the American Historical Association 2, 2. G. P. Putnam, New York, 1887.
CHAPTER 4
Lalande, J. J. “Madame Nicole-Reine Etable de la Briere Lepaute.” In Astronomical Bibliography with a History of Astronomy between 1781 and 1802. Paris, 1803.
Paulsen, Friedrich. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine. English translation by J. E. Creighton and Albert Lefevre. Frederick Ungar, New York, 1963. [Original printing 1899]
Wright, Thomas. An Original Theory of the Universe. [Original printing 1750] Macdonald, London, 1971. This edition has a very useful introduction, written by Michael A. Hoskin, to both Thomas Wright and his book.
CHAPTER 6
Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1963. Our discussion of the physics of ice is partly based upon these remarkable lectures.
Hallett, John. “How Snow Crystals Grow.” American Scientist 72, 582, 1984.
Patterson, W. S. B. The Physics of Glaciers. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1969.
Whipple, F. L. “A Comet Model I. The Acceleration of Comet Encke.” Astrophysical Journal 111, 375, 1950.
____. “A Comet Model II. Physical Relations for Comets and Meteors.” Astrophysical Journal 113, 464, 1951.
CHAPTER 7
Fanale, F., and James Salvail. “An Idealized Short-Period Comet Model: Surface Insolation, H2O Flux, Dust Flux, and Mantle Evolution,” Icarus 60, 476, 1984.
Hughes, David W. “Cometary Outbursts: A Brief Survey.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 16, 410, 1975.
CHAPTER 8
Khare, B. N., and Carl Sagan. “Experimental Interstellar Organic Chemistry: Preliminary Findings.” In Molecules in the Galactic Environment, M. A. Gordon and L. E. Snyder, eds. John Wiley, New York, 1973.
Metz, Jerred. Halley’s Comet, 1910: Fire in the Sky. Singing Bone Press, St. Louis, 1985.
Mitchell, G. F., S. S. Prasad, and W. T. Huntress. “Chemical Model Calculations of C2, c3, CH, CN, OH, and NH2 Abundances in Cometary Comas.” Astrophysical Journal 244, 1087, 1981.
Swings, P. “Le Spectre de la Comète d’Encke 1947 i.” Annales d’Astrophysique 11, 1, 1948.
Wood, John, and Sherwood Chang, eds. The Cosmic History of the Biogenic Elements and Compounds. NASA Special Publication 476, 1985.
CHAPTER 9
Barnard, E. E. “On the Anomalous Tails of Comets.” Astrophysical Journal 22, 249, 1905.
Biermann, L. “Solar Corpuscular Radiation and the Interplanetary Gas.” Observatory 77, 109, 1957.
Biermann, L., and R. Lüst. “Comets: Structure and Dynamics of Tails.” Chapter 18 of The Solar System, Vol. 4. G. P. Kuiper and B. M. Middlehurst, eds. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963.
Henry, George E. “Radiation Pressure.” Scientific American 196, 99–108, 1957.
Van Allen, James A. “Interplanetary Particles and Fields.” In The Solar System, A Scientific American book. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1975.
CHAPTER 10
Donnelly, Ignatius. Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. University Books, New York, 1970. [Original publication, 1883]
Goblet d’Alviella, Comte Eugène. The Migration of Symbols. University Books, New York, 1959. [Original printing, 1891]
Goldsmith, Donald, ed. Scientists Confront Velikovsky: Evidence Against Velikovsky’s Theory of “Worlds in Collision.” W. W. Norton, New York, 1977.
Nuttall, Zelia. “The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological and Calendrical Systems.” Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum. Harvard University, Vol. 2, 1901.
Wilson, Thomas. The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migrations; With Observation
s on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1896.
CHAPTER 11
Chebotarev, G. A. “On the Dynamical Limits of the Solar System.” Soviet Astronomy—AJ 8, 787, 1965.
Oort, J. H. “The Structure of the Cloud of Comets Surrounding the Solar System, and a Hypothesis Concerning Its Origin.” Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands 11, 91, 1950.
____. “Empirical Data on the Origin of Comets.” Chapter 20 in G. P. Kuiper and B. M. Middlehurst, eds., The Solar System, vol. 4. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963.
Öpik, E. “Notes on Stellar Perturbations of Nearly Parabolic Orbits.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 67, 169, 1932.
Russell, Henry Norris. The Solar System and Its Origin. Macmillan, New York, 1935.
Van Woerkom, A. J. J. “On the Origin of Comets.” Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands 10, 445, 1948.
CHAPTER 12
Biermann, L., and K. W. Michel. “On the Origin of Cometary Nuclei in the Presolar Nebula.” The Moon and the Planets 18, 447, 1978.
Fernandez, Julio A. “Mass Removed by the Outer Planets in the Early Solar System.” Icarus 34, 173, 1978.
Fernandez, J. A., and W. H. Ip. “On the Time Evolution of the Cometary Influx in the Region of the Terrestrial Planets.” Icarus 54, 377, 1983.
Goldreich, P., and W. R. Ward. “The Formation of Planetesimals.” Astrophysical Journal 183, 1051, 1973.
Helmholtz, H. “On the Origin of the Planetary System.” Lecture delivered by H. Helmholtz in Heidelberg and Cologne, 1871. Published in Popular Articles on Scientific Subjects by H. Helmholtz. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1881.
Safronov, V. S. “Evolution of the Protoplanetary Cloud and the Formation of the Earth and the Planets.” English-language version of the original Russian book published by Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem, 1972.
Wetherill, George W. “Evolution of the Earth’s Planetesimal Swarm Subsequent to the Formation of the Earth and Moon.” Proceedings of the Eighth Lunar Science Conference, p. 1, 1977.
CHAPTER 13
Ball, Robert. The Story of the Heavens, rev. ed. Cassell and Company, London, 1900.
Keesing’s Contemporary Archives. May 21–28, 17425–17429, 1960.
Von Humboldt, Alexander. “Events of the Night of Eleventh November, 1799.” Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America During the Years 1799 to 1804, Vol. 1. George Bell and Son, London, 1889.
CHAPTER 14
Gold, Thomas, and Steven Soter. “Cometary Impact and the Magnetization of the Moon.” Planetary and Space Sciences 24, 45, 1976.
Kerr, Richard A. “Could an Asteroid Be a Comet in Disguise?” Science 227, February 22, 1985.
Marsden, B. G. “The Sungrazing Comet Group.” Astronomical Journal 72, 1170, 1967.
Michels, D. J., N. R. Sheeley, R. A. Howard, and M. J. Koomen. “Observations of a Comet on Collision Course with the Sun.” Science 25, 1097, 1982.
Öpik, Ernst. “The Stray Bodies in the Solar System. Part 1. The Survival of Cometary Nuclei in the Asteroids.” Advances in Astronomy and Astrophysics 2, 219, 1963.
____. “The Stray Bodies in the Solar System. Part 2. The Cometary Origin of Meteorites.” Advances in Astronomy and Astrophysics 4, 301, 1966.
Shoemaker, Eugene M., and Ruth F. Wolfe. “Cratering Timescales for the Galilean Satellites.” Chapter 10 in The Satellites of Jupiter, David Morrison, ed. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1982.
Shul’man, L. M. “The Evolution of Cometary Nuclei.” In G. A. Chebotarev et al., eds. The Motion, Evolution of Orbits, and Origin of Comets. D. Reidel, Holland, 1972.
Turco, R. P., O. B. Toon, C. Park, R. C. Whitten, J. B. Pollack, and P. Noerdlinger. “An Analysis of the Physical, Chemical, Optical and Historical Impacts of the 1908 Tunguska Meteor Fall.” Icarus 50, 1, 1982.
Wetherill, George W. “Occurrence of Giant Impacts During the Growth of the Terrestrial Planets.” Science 228, 877, 1985.
CHAPTER 15
Alvarez, Luis W., Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen V. Michel. “Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction.” Science 208, 1095, 1980.
Gould, Stephen Jay. “Sex, Drugs, Disaster, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs.” Discover, March 1984, p. 67.
Hills, J. G. “Comet Showers and the Steady-State Infall of Comets from the Oort Cloud.” Astronomical Journal 86, 1730, 1981.
National Museum of Natural Sciences and National Research Council of Canada, Syllogeus Series Number 12. “Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinctions and Possible Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Causes: Proceedings of a Workshop Held in Ottawa, Canada, 16, 17 November, 1976.” National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, March 1977.
Officer, Charles B., and Charles L. Drake. “Terminal Cretaceous Environmental Events.” Science 227, 1161, 1985.
Pollack, James B., Owen B. Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, Christopher P. McKay, and Richard P. Turco. “Environmental Effects of an Impact-Generated Dust Cloud: Implications for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinctions.” Science 219, 287, 1983.
Sepkoski, J. John, Jr. “Mass Extinctions in the Phanerozoic Oceans: A Review.” Geological Society of America, Special Paper 190, 283, 1982.
____. “A Kinetic Model of Phanerozoic Taxonomic Diversity. III. Post-Paleozoic Families and Mass Extinctions.” Paleobiology 10, 246, 1984.
____. “Phanerozoic Overview of Mass Extinction.” In Pattern and Process in the History of Life, D. M. Raup and D. Jablonski, eds. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1986.
Shoemaker, Eugene M. “Asteroid and Comet Bombardment of the Earth.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 11, 461, 1983.
Steel, Rodney, and Anthony Harvey, eds. The Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Life. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1979.
“The Fossil Record and Evolution: Readings from Scientific American.” W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1982.
Urey, Harold C. “Cometary Collisions and Geological Periods.” Nature 242, 32, 1973.
CHAPTER 16
Alvarez, Walter, Frank Asaro, Helen V. Michel, and Luis W. Alvarez. “Iridium Anomaly Approximately Synchronous with Terminal Eocene Extinctions.” Science 216, 886, 1982.
“A Talk with Eugene Shoemaker.” Interview by Charlene Anderson, The Planetary Report 5 (1) 7, January/February, 1985.
Davis, Marc, Piet Hut, and Richard A. Muller. “Extinction of Species by Periodic Comet Showers.” Nature 308, 715, 1984.
Gould, Stephen Jay. “Continuity.” Natural History, April 1984, p. 4.*
____. “The Cosmic Dance of Siva.” Natural History, August 1984, p. 14.*
Hills, J. G. “Dynamical Constraints on the Mass and Perihelion Distance of Nemesis and the Stability of Its Orbit.” Nature 311, 636, 1984.
Hoffman, Antoni. “Patterns of Family Extinction Depend on Definition and Geological Timescale.” Nature 315, 659, 1985.
Rampino, Michael, and Richard Stothers. “Geological Rhythms and Cometary Impacts.” Science 226, 1427, 1984.
____. “Terrestrial Mass Extinctions, Cometary Impacts and the Sun’s Motion Perpendicular to the Galactic Plane.” Nature 308, 709, 1984.
Raup, David M., and J. John Sepkoski, Jr. “Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 81, 801, 1984.
Schwartz, Richard D., and Philip B. James. “Periodic Mass Extinctions and the Sun’s Oscillations about the Galactic Plane.” Nature 308, 712, 1984.
Smoluchowski, R., J. N. Bancall, and M. S. Matthews, eds. The Galaxy and the Solar System. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1985.
Thaddeus, Patrick, and Gary A. Chanan. “Cometary Impacts, Molecular Clouds, and the Motion of the Sun Perpendicular to the Galactic Plane.” Nature 314, 73, 1985.
Whitmire, Daniel, and Albert A. Jackson. “Are Periodic Mass Extinctions Driven by a Distant Solar Companion?” Nature 308, 713, 1984.
br /> CHAPTER 17
Bar-Nun, A., A. Lazcano-Araujo, and J. Oro. “Could Life Have Evolved in Cometary Nuclei?” Origins of Life 11, 387, 1981.
Forster, T. Atmospheric Causes of Epidemic Diseases. London, 1829.
Hobbs, R. W., and J. M. Hollis. “Probing the Presently Tenuous Link between Comets and the Origin of Life.” Origins of Life 12, 125, 1982.
Hoyle, Fred. “Comets—A Matter of Life and Death.” Vistas in Astronomy 24, 123, 1980.
Hoyle, Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe. Diseases from Space. Harper, New York, 1979.
Irvine, W. M., S. B. Leschine, and F. P. Schloerb. “Thermal History, Chemical Composition and Relationship of Comets to the Origin of Life.” Nature 283, 748, 1980.
Oro, J. “Comets and the Formation of Biochemical Compounds on the Primitive Earth.” Nature 190, 389, 1961.
Sales-Guyon de Montlivault, E.-J.-F. Conjectures sur la réunion de la lune à la terre, et des satellites en général a leur planète principale; à l’aide desquelles on essaie d’expliquer la cause et les effets du déluge, la disparition totale d’anci-ennes espèces vivantes et organiques, et la formation soudaine ou apparition d’autres espèces nouvelles et de l’homme lui-même sur la globe terrestre. Paris: Adrien Egron, 1821.
Shoemaker, Eugene M. “Asteroid and Comet Bombardment of the Earth.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 11, 461, 1983.
Wallis, Max. “Radiogenic Melting of Primordial Comet Interiors.” Nature 284, 431, 1980.
CHAPTER 18
Gay, Peter. Education of the Senses. Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.
“Halley’s Comet from a Balloon.” Aeronautics 6, 204, June 1910.
Morrison, David, et a1. Planetary Exploration Through the Year 2000: A Core Program. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1983.
Neugebauer, M., et al., eds. Space Missions to Comets. NASA Conference Publication 2089, 1979.