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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2018
Those investigators who have been active in cometary studies for a long time must by now have detected in their midst a number of interlopers from outside the solar system. As one of these newcomers from a far-off field of astronomy, who cannot possibly claim any expertise on comets, I feel compelled to account for the presence of stellar and interstellar astronomers in this arena. The reason is that some of us believe that the comets represent a sample of relatively unprocessed material from the early solar system, from which we may be able to learn something not only of the young sun and planets, but also something about the material of the parent interstellar cloud plus any fresher interstellar material that the cometary nuclei have been able to accrete over the past 4.6 billion years.