The status of the international Halley watch

More than 1000 professional astronomers worldwide actually observed Halley's comet from the ground. Preliminary logs from the observers indicate that 20-40 Gbytes of data were acquired in eight professional disciplines and as much as 5 Gbytes in the amateur network. The latter will be used to fill in gaps in the Archive and to provide a visual light curve. In addition roughly 400 Mbytes of data were taken on Comet Giacobini-Zinner. Data will be accepted for archiving until early 1989. The permanent archive will consist of a set of CD-ROMs and a set of books, publication of both to be completed by mid-1990. Data from the space missions will be included but only on the CDs. From every indication, the ground based effort and the space missions complimented each other beautifully, both directly in the solution of spacecraft navigation problems and indirectly in the solution of scientific problems. The major remaining concern is that scientists submit their data to the Archive before the 1989 deadline.