Images of comets on archival photographic plates from the Jagiellonian University Observatory

Images of comets on archival photographic plates from the Jagiellonian University Observatory

Greg Stachowski, Elżbieta Kuligowska, Tomasz Kundera, Bartłomiej Dębski and Katarzyna Bajan

The Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University produced a large number of photographic plates of various types and sizes over many decades. With the demise of emulsion-based photography as an observational technique in the latter years of the 20th century, the plate collection was neglected, and many plates have been destroyed or damaged by water or accidents, while written records have been lost. As part of the AstroGrid-PL project we were able to scan the surviving plates and (known) records and are in the process of identifying and publishing the images, some of which record observations of comets. Here we present some examples from plates made with the Zeiss Tessar Astrograph.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 7, 377-379 (2018)

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