The 1980's have been times of great excitement in Astrophysics and Cosmology. Professors Dennis Sciama and Fabio Mardirossian and all the other Members of the Organizing Committees are to be congratulated for having given us a taste of this excitement in Trieste, by inviting the leaders of the subject to the meeting they have organized. The excitement has corne from the new observations of the three-dimensional structure of the universe through a large number of new measurements of redshifts. These have revealed that clusters of galaxies are distributed on the surface of big empty bubbles of...

A strange field of speculation is opened by this phenomenon ...here we have a star fitfully variable to an astonishing extent. and whose fluctuations are spread over centuries. apparently in no settled period. and with no regularity of progression. What origin can we ascribe to these sudden flashes and relapses? What conclusions are we to draw as to the comfort or habitability of a system depending for its supply of light and heat on so uncertain a source? -- J. F. W. Herschel! We can imagine, at least, that the study of Luminous Blue Variable stars began as the official court astrophysicists...

Magnetism, when extended beyond normal frameworks into cosmic space is characterized by an enormous spatial scale. Because of their large sizes the nature of magnets such as the Earth and the Sun is entirely different from the nature of a horseshoe magnet. The source of cosmic magnetism is associated with the hydrodynamic motions of a highly conductive medium. In this aspect, cosmic magnets resemble a dynamo. However, currents in the dynamo flow along properly ordered wires, while chaotic, turbulent motions are dominant inside stars and liquid planetary cores. This makes more intriguing and...

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. To satisfy my own curiosity, I investigated the precise relationships of the famous astronomers in the family and published an account of them, based mainly on secondary sources. The exercise made me a ware that there was no biography in English of the first and probably still the greatest astronomer in the clan -- Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve. Wilhelm's son, the first Otto, wrote...

Proceedings of the Midnight Sun Conference, held in Tromso, Norway, July 1-8, 1987"

Astrophysical analysis relating to solid matter requires data on properties and processes. Such data, however, expecially appropriate to space conditions are mostly lacking. It appeared then very tempting to gather together experimentalists, ob- servers and theoreticians working in the field of cosmic dust and in related areas. The Workshop held in Capri (Italy) from September 8th till 12th 1987 gave the participants a unique opportunity for exchange of ideas and discussions of problems and experimental procedures. Introductory reports were prepared with the aim of giving the state of the art...

This volume contains papers presented at IAU Colloquium No. 90. at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in May of 1985. A few additional contributions are included from authors who for various reasons were unable to attend the meeting. Four years have passed since the last major international conference on chemically peculiar stars of the upper main sequence was held in Liege. Belgium in 1981. Previous conferences were held in 1975 (Vienna. Austria) and in 1965 (Greenbelt. Maryland. USA). As the proceedings of this Colloquium show. the recent availability of ultraviolet spectra of large...

Since 1976 a meeting devoted to recent research on cataclysmic variables ("CV workshop") has been held annually somewhere in North America. Many of the meetings have been held - following a custom older than anyone reading this book - in locations with well-known recreational potential (e. g. Santa Cruz, CA; Boulder, CO). We thought hard about this custom while contemplating the possibility of organi- zing a meeting in Massachusetts in the middle of winter. Nobody wants their meeting to go down in history as the smallest and dullest, and it ~ surely be the coldest. But on occasion, meeting...

On the occasion of the International Conference on Cosmic Rays held in Kyoto in August 1979 five aged members of the cosmic ray fraternity, H. Elliot, V. L. Ginzburg, B. Peters, Y. Sekido, and J. A. Simpson met together as a dinner party devoted to the enjoyment of Japanese cuisine and reminiscences of our younger days. This pleasant occasion called to of our own age as well as some eminent seniors not present at the mind the many friends conference whose recollections would have further enriched and enlivened our evening. By the time the dinner came to an end we had agreed that the...

Adriaan Blaauw; Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the Universities of Groningen and Leiden, former Directo.r of the Kapteyn Laboratory and of the European Southern Observatory, celebrated his 70th anniversary on 12 April 1984. To mark this event, an international Symposium was con- vened on the subject "Birth and Evolution of Massive Stars and Stellar Groups", a subject which has played the leading role in Blaauw's scien- tific research. The present volume contains the Scientific Proceedings of that Symposium. The meeting was organized by a Committee consisting of: W.H.W.M. Boland...