Cometary Activity Observations

The Minor Planet Center encourages the submission of reports of suspected cometary activity for NEOCP/PCCP
objects and for non-NEOCP objects designated as minor planets (including objects with A/ designations).

A cometary submission can also be made programatically: An example script using Python can be found here.

Please read the following before reporting your information.

• Please be aware that the data collected by this form will be used to automatically generate cometary
  reports for inclusion in Minor Planet Electronic Circulars (MPECs). Therefore, please be careful as the
  data will be reproduced exactly as submitted.
• All such reports of cometary activity should be made using this form.
• Any reports of activity for known comets made to this form will be ignored.
• Only reports of activity made using the form will be considered for inclusion in any subsequent MPEC
  announcing cometary status.
• Any astrometry associated with the objects for which activity is being reported should be submitted to the
  MPC through the normal channels and labelled as 'New Comet'.
  • This will provide the MPC with the RA and Dec. coordinates of the objects at the time of the
    reported activity.
  • This also allows for the standard submission of lists of observer- and measurer-names.
• Please only report one observation per submission. For example, follow up observations should be
  entered separately.
• Fields marked with an asterisk* are required.

Formatting Information

• The format of the person reporting cometary activity should match the format used in observation submission.
  This is usually in the form of initials and last name e.g. K. Smith or J. R. R. Tolkien.
• Hyphenated first names should be abbreviated with the hyphen: e.g., 'Jean-Francois Hulot' would be
  'J.-F. Hulot'.
• Names that contain non-standard characters (e.g., accents or cedillas) may be specified using standard TeX
  notation.