This volume contains the lectures presented at the second course of the International School of Space Chemistry held in Erice (Sicily) from October 20 - 30 1991 at the "E. Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture". The course was attended by 58 participants from 13 countries. The Chemistry of Life's Origins is well recognized as one of the most critical subjects of modem chemistry. Much progress has been made since the amazingly perceptive contributions by Oparin some 70 years ago when he first outlined a possible series of steps starting from simple molecules to basic building blocks and...

Solid particles are followed from their creation through their evolution in the Galaxy to their participation in the formation of solar systems like our own, these being now clearly deduced from observations by the Hubble Space Telescope as well as by IR and visual observations of protostellar disks, like that of the famous Beta Pictoris object. The most recent observational, laboratory and theoretical methods are examined in detail. In our own solar system, studies of meteorites, comets and comet dust reveal many features that follow directly from the interstellar dust from which...

IAU Symposium Number 52 on Interstellar Dust and Related Topics was held at Albany, N.Y., on the campus of the State University of New York at Albany from May 29 to June 2, 1972. The members of the Organizing Committee were: Dr A. D. Code, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., U.S.A. Dr B. D. Donn, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., U.S.A. Dr A. Elvius, Stockholm Observatory, Saltsjobaden, Sweden. Dr T. Gehrels, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., U.S.A. Dr J. M. Greenberg (Chairman), State University of New York at Albany, Albany, N.Y., U.S.A. Dr...

The date: September 30, 1880 The place: A private observatory in Hastings-on-Hudson Profession of the observer: A medical doctor The instrument: An l1-inch Clark refractor. The significance of that night marked one of the truly great turning points in the development of astronomical techniques: Dr Henry Draper, a wealthy New York medical doctor, had secured the first photograph of a nebula: a 51-minute exposure on a dry gelatinobromide plate showing the wispy nebulosity of the Orion Nebula. By March 1882, Draper had secured an exposure of 137 minutes, showing far richer detail of both bright...