UC Davis

Ground based observations of comets obtained in support of spacecraft missions and space telescopes have provided critical supporting context that greatly enhances the value of the combined dataset. Major areas of ground-based contribution include providing unique instrumental capabilities and an increased temporal or global perspective on the system under study. This paper describes a decades long program of supporting cometary observations focused on high resolving power measurements of ions and atomic/molecular radicals in the coma. The instrumentation is described, along with the species under study and the results from a large campaign to study comet C/1995O1 (Hale-Bopp).