CARA (Cometary Archive for Amateur astronomers) is a project born thanks to the “GOC” (Group of Cometary Observers), a group of experienced Italian amateur astronomers that operated within the Comet Section of the Union of Italian Amateur Astronomers (Unione Astrofili Italiani - U.A.I. ).

Since 1998 the GOC has been exploring the CCD technique related to observation of comets with particular attention to the photometric approach.

This comes from the finding that a number of comets can be currently observed by amateur astronomers with small telescopes and CCD arrays, granting a nearly continuous monitoring of these objects. On the other hand we realized that CCD observations contain potentially much more scientific information that that usually achieved by amateur astronomers with the classical image processing techniques and determining the total magnitude (often on unfiltered images). 
Looking for a compromise between scientific results and a relatively simple observing technique, we approached to the Afrho quantity  that appeared to satisfy our requirements.The aim of this observing program is also to give a starting point for developing a well standardized basic technique for amateur astronomers involved in CCD comet observing.

The project was officially presented at MACE 2003 (Meeting on Asteroids and Comet in Europe) by Gyula Szabò (Physics Dept. Szeged University, Hungary) and at the IWCA III (International Workshop of Cometary Astronomy) in 2004 by Giannantonio Milani (Italian Comet Section). The first stage of the project about observing and reduction techniques  was  completed, the second one concerning the implementation of the database is in progress.  The early archive version was realized storing the data on a simply txt-format files, but the increase in the number of data and the need of performing more detailed analysis forced us to move toward the realization of a general database. 

In past years the program has been constantly improved thanks to the contribution of several active observers. Among them a particular effort is due to Rolando Ligustri, Diego Tirelli, Giovanni Sostero, Roberto Trabatti, Carlo Vinante, Daniele Carosati, Martino Nicolini, Toni Scarmato, .
A relevant support, assistance and suggestions came also  from  Marco Fulle (Trieste Astrophysical Observatory, INAF), Gian Paolo Tozzi (Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, INAF), Gyula Szabo (Department of Physics and Observatory of Szeged University, Hungary), Laurent Jorda (LAM, Marseille), Herman Mikuz (Crni Vrh Observatory,  Mauro Barbieri (LAM, Marseille).
We also thanks Michael A' Hearn for encouraging our project and for his useful comments and suggestion in particular during the IWCAIII held in Paris.