Hunting and Imaging Comets Author: Martin Mobberley Publisher: Springer ISBN:978-1-4419-6904-0 Price: £35.99 (Pb) 394pp
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Martin Mobberley is a well-known author of practical astronomy books having written seven previous Springer titles. This, his most recent offering, is packed with a wealth of information to aid both would-be comet discoverers and observers alike. The author is certainly well qualified to write about comets having attempted to discover a comet back in the early 1980s and over the intervening years having known many of the other amateurs bitten by the same comet 'bug'.

The book is nicely illustrated with 167 figures (20 of which are in colour) and is well researched and accurate throughout comprising a collection of 15 chapters, each of which is a good read in itself. The first four chapters deal with the historical track record through to the end of 2009. Then six chapters follow covering activities the observer can usefully undertake, including ‘Find the next Hale-Bopp with your gear’ and ‘Comets that have been missed by the pros’, the latter yielding many pointers as to how the keen amateur can beat the professionally-run automated surveys that trawl a large fraction of the available sky each night searching for comets and other transient objects. Mobberley includes a series of 'how to' chapters giving sound advice about techniques and observing gear before he rounds off his book with short biographies on ‘A few of the world's keenest comet imagers’, finishing with listings of useful comet resources.

I enjoyed the conversational style of the writer including his many light-hearted remarks and occasional humorous quip. Indeed, this reviewer found the text sufficiently inspiring that he too has been lured into part-time comet chasing, being now kitted out with the necessary equipment and all ready to go. So I would say that if, by any chance, you too have leanings of the comet kind then this book is certainly for you.

Richard Miles