Are there other planetary systems like ours? Other planets like ours? Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?' So asks Dr. Lew Allen Jr. in the Foreword. In December of 1992, theorists, observers, and instrument builders gathered at the California Institute of Technology to discuss the search for answers to these questions. The International Conference, entitled Planetary Systems: Formation, Evolution, and Detection' and supported through NASA's newly formed TOPS (Toward Other Planetary Systems) program, was the first of a series of conferences uniting researchers across disciplines and...

The Bosscha Observatory in Lembang, Java, Indonesia, celebrated in 1983 its 60th anniversary. Since its foundation, the physical properties of binary systems have formed a major research topic of this observatory. Until 1970, the study of visual binaries and the determination of orbits received most emphasis. Since then, also the evolution of close binary systems, such as X-ray binaries, Wolf-Rayet binaries and binary pulsars, has been researched with priority in Lembang. It seemed thus appropriate that a Colloquium devoted to the study of binary systems be held in Lembang at the time of the...

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...

During the past years, a number of international astronomical conferences were held at the Remeis-Observatory in Bamberg, four of them sponsored by the International Astronomical Union. The first meeting was organized in 1959 and dealt with Variable Stars, the last one was held in 1981 and focussed on 'Binary and Multiple Stars as Tracers of Stellar Evolution'. The present conference was organized to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, who was born in Minden on July 22, 1784, and died in Konigsberg on March 17, 1846. When the plan for an international...