The Sixth European Regional Meeting in Astronomy (VI ERMA) on "Sun and Planetary System" was held in Dubrovnik (Yugoslavia), 19-23 October 1981, sponsored by the Federal Executive Council of Yugoslavia, the IAU, IUGG, and the European Physical Society. The Scientific Organizing Committee included W. Fricke (Chairman), H. Alfven, H. Haupt, H. Kautzleben, Z. Kopal, J. Kovalevsky, V. A. Krat, L. Kresak, G. Marx, P. Melchior, P. J. Message, J. -C. Pecker, G. Sitarski, B. Sevarlic, G. Teleki, and R. M. West. The Local Organizing Committee representing the Union of Societies of Mathematicians,...

If Zdenek Kopal Department of Astronomy University of Manchester Your Magnificences, my Lord Mayor, ladies and gentlemen! It is a great pleasure for me to respond, on behalf of your foreign guests, to your gracious words of welcome; and to thank you for the wonderful reception which you nave extended to us. The city of Bamberg and its Remeis Sternwarte nas indeed been renowned allover the world for a great many years - as the place where your Observatory's first director, Professor Ernst Hartwig (1851-1923) - in addition to his other titles to fame - collaborated (with Gustav Muller of...

When my colleague Dr. Paul Kent asked me which branch of Physics was most lively and which would lend itself best to a small high quality Symposium, I had no hesitation in answering 'Cosmology'. It seemed very timely that a meeting should take place which would bring together scientists interested in all branches of Astronomy, including Cosmic Rays, and Elementary Particles too and endeavour to put at least some of the pieces of the jigsaw together. The vast majority of the papers presented were later produced ~n appropriate camera-ready form and are published in this volume. I am very...

A meeting on "Astrophysics. from Spacelab" was held at the Internatio- nal Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, in the Autumn of 1976. Scope of the meeting was to bring to the attention of an increasing number of physi- cists and astrophysicists, including scientists from developing countries, the new facil ities made available by the combination of the Shuttle and the Spacelab programmes. This book starts from that meeting and includes, together with reports presented in Trieste, duly updated, a few additional reviews on selected to- pi cs. In the first part, D.J.Shapland and G.Giampalmo...

The 4th European Regional Meeting in Astronomy, entitled "Stars and Star Systems", was held in Uppsala, Sweden, on August 7 -12, 1978. It was attended by 228 participants from 24 countries. Over 100 papers were presented; this required parallel sessions throughout the Meeting. Financial support was given by the IAU, the Swedish Department of Education, the Swedish Natural Science Research Council, the Swedish Institute and the University of Uppsala. The members of the Scientific and Local Organizing Committees are listed below, and I thank all of them for their contributions to the Meeting....

P. J. MESSAGE University of Liverpool The papers which comprise this volume were presented at Colloquium No. 41 of the International Astronimical Union, which was held in Cambridge, England, from the 17th to the 19th of August, 1976, and had as its subject 'Dynamics of Planets and Satellites and Theories of their Motion'. The Colloquium was held just prior to the XVIth General Assembly of the Union (which was held from 24th August to 2nd September, in Grenoble, France) to provide an opportunity for the presentation of research papers on a number of active and lively branches of Celestial...

The I. A. U. Colloquium No. 29 was held in Budapest, September 1-5, 1975. The subject of the colloquium was: "Multiple Periodic Variable Stars". The colloquium was organized by the Scientific Organizing Committee consisting of W. S. Fitch (Chairman), M. W. Feast, B. V. Kukarkin, P. Ledoux, J. Smak, R. S. Stobie, B. Szeidl, B. Warner and S. C. Wolff. The local organization was placed in the hands of a Committee consisting of the staff of the Konkoly Observatory: B. Szeidl (Chairman), K. Barlai, M. Ill, S. Kany6 and L. Szabados. The colloquium was attended by about 90 scientists representing...

The principal purpose of IAU Colloquium No. 35 was to discuss those aspects of the techniques of the compilation, evaluation, and distribution of data that are common to astrometry, photometry and spectrometry of stars and stellar systems. In the announcement of the Colloquium, it was suggested that there would be special emphasis on the techniques of quality control, and on the standards for the presentation of numerical data in both printed and com puter-readable form. As the meeting progressed it became clear that the lack of a standard, unambiguous system for the identifi cation of...

Michael Friedjung Though known since antiquity, novae are still poorly under- stood and present many problems. There has tended to be a lack of communication between theoreticians and observers and between different schools of thought, in spite of the advances of recent years in certain directions (observations of ordinary novae at minimum and of dwarf novae, theory of the causes of the explosion, etc *** ). The meeting whose proceedings are contained in this volume was organized to stimulate a confron- tation between the different ideas and results. The subject has changed a lot since 1963,...

On behalf of the IAU Commission 48 "High Energy Astrophysics" a special session on "CNO Isotopes in Astrophysics" was held at the General Assembly of IAU in Grenoble on August 30, 1976. This topic was chosen since it has recently included many exciting developments in various domains of physics and astrophysics such as for instance meteoritical studies, radioastronomy measurements of the interstellar gas, new determinations of nuclear reactions cross-sections and fractionation processes. The papers of this volume are the written versions of the talks which were presented during this session...