Astronomy, space and time

th Coinciding with the 300 anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia The International Astronomical Union organized the colloquium No.

My interest in the history of the Struve family is long-standing but lay dormant until 1972, when I found myself organizing a symposium of the International Astronomical Union in memory of the second Otto Struve.

IAU Symposium 135 on Interstellar Dust was hosted and co-sponsored by NASA's Ames Research Center from July 26-30, 1988.

The quest for high resolution has preoccupied radio astronomers ever since radio waves were first detected from space fifty years ago.

When leaving the Victoria airport the day before our Colloquium, I saw a van of the Dunsmuir Lodge marked with big letters which I read as "e;Alcohol Colloquium"e;.

The investigation of the Galactic nucleus and its surroundings is necessarily a modem endeavor, for traditional observations made at visual wavelengths have not even begun to penetrate the veil of -30 magnitudes of visual extinction that intercedes.

A few years ago, a real break-through happened in observational astronomy: the un- derstanding of the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the structure of stellar images, and of ways to overcome this dramatic degradation.

The words of this preface were written when the book was ready to go to the press; and are limited to only a few points which are best made in this place.

Much has been said and written about the abilities of modern instrumentation to help solve problems of combustion in engines.

Within the framework of Ispra Courses, a course on "e;Applications of Remote Sensing to Agrometeorology"e; was held from April 6th to 10th, 1987 at the Joint Research Centre of the European Communities, Ispra Italy.

Fundamental unsolved problems of stellar astrophysics include the effects of angular momentum on stellar structure and evolution, the nature and efficiency of the processes by which angular momentum is redistributed within and lost from stars, and the role that stellar rotation plays in enhancing or driving stellar mass loss.

From the reviews:"e;.

This collection of essays is a tribute to Stillman Drake by some of his friends and colleagues, and by others on whom his work has had a formative influence.

In summary, we can conclude that the contributions of the different ionization processes to the total ionization rate for the most abundant interstellar species are basically known.

TECTONlCS AND PHYSICS Geology, although rooted in the laws of physics, rarely has been taught in a manner designed to stress the relations between the laws and theorems of physics and the postulates of geology.

A small country builds a world-class telescope in its backyard and lives happily ever after (or at least for a quarter century).

Recent years have seen increasing evidence that the main epoch of galaxy formation in the universe may be directly accessible to observation.

Leading researchers in the area of the origin and evolution of life in the universe contributed to Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life.

Although the Milky Way is the most studied and best understood galactic system, there are many fundamental questions about our Galaxy that remain unanswered.

This volume contains the proceedings of an international conference on Shocks in Astrophysics held at UMIST, Manchester, England from January 9-12, 1995.

This workshop is devoted to Double stars.

Large area sky surveys are now a reality in the radio, IR, optical and X-ray passbands.

The articles in this book represent the major contributions at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop that was held from 6 to 9 July 1987 in the magnificent setting of Dyffryn House and Gardens, in St.

With the advent of space observatories and modern developments in ground- based astronomy and concurrent progress in the theoretical understanding of these observations it has become clear that accretion of material on to compact objects is an ubiquitous mechanism powering very diverse astrophysical sources ranging in size and luminosity by many orders of magnitude.

A strange field of speculation is opened by this phenomenon .

It is the customary practice to report the major events of a General Assembly -the Invited Discourses, Joint Discussions and Joint Commission Meetings in Highlights of Astronomy.

In the development of Fundamental Physics on one side, and of Astronomy/Cosmology on the other side, periods of parallell, relatively independent progress seem to alternate with others of intense interaction and mutual influence.

This book on reference systems is the first comprehensive review of the problem of celestial and terrestrial reference systems and frames.

Scientists in the late twentieth century are not the first to view galaxy formation as a phenomenon worthy of explanation in terms of the known laws of physics.

Robert J.

The 1980's have been times of great excitement in Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Every 5 years since 1967 a meeting has been held to discuss the subject of planetary nebulae and their central stars.

This volume contains the lectures presented at the first course of the Inter- national School of Space Chemistry held in Erice (Sicily) from May 10 to May 20 at the 'E.

Since the 1970s symposia or colloquia devoted to recent research on close binaries have been held around the world almost annually.

Solid matter in space is crucial in accounting for many processes.

IA U Symposium Number 141 "e;Inertial Coordinate System on the Sky"e; was held in Leningrad, USSR from 17-21 October 1989.

Recent years have witnessed the expansion and multiplication of the observations of star formation and fragmentation accompanied by a consequent growth in the study of the underlying physical processes, the chemistry, the sites, the times, etc.

Text no 1 Radio Recombination Lines (RRLs), discovered in the USSR in 1964, have become a powerful research tool for astronomers.

This book contains the proceedings of the sixth Eurographics Workshop on Vir- tual Environments.

The visible universe is a small perturbation on the material universe.

Gas at temperatures exceeding one million degrees is common in the Universe.

Along with the traditional optical window, many new windows have been opened on galaxies in the last two decades, made possible by new developments in groundbased detectors and by space missions that allow detection of photons that are otherwise absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere.

ASTRONOMICAL ECLIPSE PHENOMENA In looking over the long history of human science from time immemorial to our own times, it is impossible to overestimate the role played in it by the phenomena of eclipses of the celestial bodies-both within our solar system as well as in the stellar universe at large.

Around the beginning of the sixteenth century, Portuguese and Dutch sailors first ventured into southern seas.

This volume is the documentation of the second Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', held at Erice in September 1988.