All branches of astrophysics are encompassed in this book, from the largest scales and cosmology to the solar system and the Sun, through the galaxies and the stars, including a section on astronomical instrumentation. Experts from across the world 'speak' in a single book about the most recent, exciting results from their fields. A CD-ROM accompanies the book opening a panorama of astrophysics today.

The HEDLA-08 conference was a continuation of a series of biennial conferences first held in Pleasanton, California, in 1996, and focused on progress made during recent years in designing, conducting, and analyzing the results of laboratory experiments, theoretical work, and computer simulations relevant to high-energy density (HED) astrophysics. The astrophysics aspects of HED experiments are extremely diverse and include jets, the mechanism of their generation and interaction with the ambient medium; stellar evolution with a focus on turbulence, hydrodynamic instabilities, and mixing of nuclear species; radiative supersonic flows associated with stellar explosions and jets; radiative processes in plasma; equation of state and material properties; and last but not least magnetized and relativistic plasmas. This volume contains a small but representative subset of 35 peer-reviewed papers presented at the HEDLA-08 meeting.

These workshop proceedings aim to provide a broad overview of recent developments in the study of hot stars, both from the observational and the theoretical point of view. Included are first results from the Hubble Space Telescope and ROSAT, the effects of non-radial pulsations, mass loss, magnetic fields, and diffusion, as well as modern theoretical methods to treat radiative transfer and compute model atmospheres. Many new results are described, including the discovery of a B star in the halo of M31. Together the reviews provide a general overview of hot-star spectroscopy suitable for preparing advanced lecture courses and as an introductory text for graduate students.

This collection of papers presents a rather complete review of current knowledge of hot spots in some strong extragalactic radio sources. An overview of known results along with new data on radio observations and optical observations is given in the first and second parts of the book. Recent computational techniques which allow modelling and simulations of hot spots and jet behaviour are presented in the third part. The fourth part discusses particle acceleration and shock front phenomena. The articles will help the reader to appreciate the role hot spots play as laboratories for studying the interaction of jets with the surrounding medium and for testing our understanding of the overall source dynamics. The book is a valuable complement to the existing literature and an excellent introduction to this fairly new field of research.

The book is the first thorough overview of the first important steps to develop a worldwide virtual observatory so that, in the future, it could be easier to "dial-up" a part of the sky than wait many months to access a telescope. The articles in this book present details on the status of the first efforts to develop a standardized framework for the virtual observatory, including steps towards completion and deployment of technical infrastructure, uptake by data providers worldwide, and utilization by the scientific community.

Large-scale structures in the universe are becoming ever more important in modern astrophysics. This volume is dedicated to the memory of the late astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky and presents 34 lectures dealing with observational and theoretical aspects of the morphology of the universe. Reports on the distribution, properties and evolution of groups, clusters and superclusters of galaxies, as well as theoretical attempts to explain these findings using such ideas as biased galaxy formation and cold dark matter, are presented here for researchers and students of astronomy and astrophysics.

The subject of the book, the ubiquitous circumstellar disks around very young stars and the corresponding jets of outflowing matter, has recently become one of the hottest areas in astrophysics. The disks are thought to be precursors to planetary systems, and the outflows are thought to be a necessary phase in the formation of a young star, helping the star to get rid of angular momentum and energy as it makes its way onto the main sequence. The possible connections to planetary systems and stellar astrophysics makes these topics especially broad, appealing to generalists and specialists alike. The CD not only contains papers that could not be printed in the book but allows the authors to include a fair amount of data, often displayed as color images.

This is perhaps the most complete, detailed and readable story of manned space-flight ever published. The text begins with the historical origins of the dream of walking on the Moon, covers the earliest Mercury and Gemini flights and then moves on to the end of the Apollo era. In readable, fascinating detail, Hamish Lindsay - who was directly involved in all three programs - chronicles mankind's greatest adventure with a great narrative, interviews, quotes and masses of photographs, including some previously unpublished. In addition to bringing the history of these missions to life the book serves as a detailed reference for space enthusiasts and students.

This volume gives a comprehensible survey of BL Lac objects: contributors summarize observations on these interesting astrophysical objects and present theoretical models to explain them. Understanding these objects should help to give a better insight into the physics of black holes and relativistic plasmas. Topics addressed cover radio jets expanding at superluminal velocities, possible effects of relativistic jets on interstellar matter, the continuum emission over the whole electromagnetic system and its variability, and the impact of these observations on gravitational lensing and cosmological evolution. The book should be immensely useful for graduate students.

volume XIX A of IAU Transactions contains the reports by Presidents of Commissions, covering the period July 1981 - June 1984. The topics of IAU Commissions deal with all of contemporary astronomy and the present volume therefore constitutes an exhaustive and unique record of astronomical research during this interval. It is particularly useful for astronomers and other scientists who want to gain an overview of a certain field, not necessarily near their own research area. Each Commission President was requested, by early 1984, to begin prep arations for the compilation of his/her Commission report. All members of Commissions were asked to supply details about their individual research pro grammes. The ensuing, very substantial task of concatenating was undertaken in late 1984 by the Presidents, often supported by a team of authors, all recog nized authorities in their fields. In order to preserve some measure of uni formity - which is in any case very difficult with so many authors - editorial guidelines were sent to Presidents, including the number of pages allotted to each Commission.

Since the previous Symposium, several exciting new developments and advances have occurred in the field of frequency standards and metrology. These include the first results on the long-tenn stability of a millisecond Pulsar, for which data 14 integrated over several years now show a stability of around 10- . Improvements in the understanding of various biases in Cesium beam standards promise accuracies in the low 14s for primary standards and in the low 13s for short commercial tubes, for which long tenn stabilities in low 14s have already been shown to be obtainable by accuracy improvement. Beams using optical pumping for state selection and for detection have been operated with excellent results, and more are being realized. Other new frequency standards which have appeared include a macroscopic rf trap with Mercury ions, which perfonns in the low 15s in one day, the sub millimeter metastable Magnesium beam, which has shown a short tenn stability 19 in the low 12s in one second and promises an accuracy of 10- , and the cold Hydrogen masers, which have such high stabilities that they cannot be measured with existing local oscillators. Prospects for future developments include laser manipulation of neutrals and spectroscopy of single ions at rest in a trap. Both these groups of techniques have great potential for unprecedented accuracy and short-and long-tenn stability, and new superior frequency standards are expected to be realizable in this way in the not too distant future.

Indispensable for the building of cosmological models are precise observational data. To provide such data is the main purpose of this book. First, an analysis of recent cosmological observations using artificial satellites and large ground-based telescopes is given. Among these are the observation of the spatial distribution of galaxies and clusters, the detection of peculiar velocity fields in large regions, and the measurement of anisotropies in the microwave background radiation. Second, the authors present theoretical models which best fit the given observational data. The book addresses graduate students and astronomers and astrophysicists.

The contributions in this volume discuss the magnetic structures in the outer atmospheres of active late-type stars, and in particular the various methods available for imaging surface features on these objects. Emphasis has been laid upon multiwavelength studies of the phenomena and the application of solar astrophysics to stellar objects. The book is recommended to research workers or postgraduate students in stellar astrophysics.

The idea of a joint ESO / Australia meeting on the large number of exciting new facilities that are, or will soon be, available tihne southern hemisphere arose quite naturally. In the optical and the near-infrared, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) will soon be operational. In the radio, the Australia Telescope Com pact Array is going to be upgraded to higher frequencies (20 and 100 GHz), together with an improvement in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) facil ities. Other major facilities, such as the Large Millimetre Array and the lkT are being planned. Moreover, new deep surveys are underway in the southern hemi sphere: the southern Hubble Deep Field, the ESO Imaging Survey (BIS), pan oramic deep surveys with the UK Schmidt telescope, and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) 2dF galaxy/QSO redshift survey in the optical; and the Parkes multibeam HI survey and Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) Wide Field continuum survey at radio wavelengths. With all these new facilities, important progress will be made regarding important issues such as the large scale structure of the universe, the very early universe and the associated first epoch of galaxy formation. The generation of large databases, and the oppor tunity for sensitive follow-up observations in complementary wavebands, mean that coordinated radio, infrared and optical projects in the southern hemisphere are likely to become increasingly attractive and important.

This outstanding collection of surveys addresses graduate and predoctoral students. It reports on theoretical research and observational data on active galactic nuclei: The enigma of the nuclei of galaxies with their central "monster" driving the vast range of activity observed in quasars, radio galaxies, Seyferts, starburst galaxies and even our own Galaxy are explored in this volume. Topics covered include: the impact of recent measurements in the infrared and radio region on our knowledge of thenucleus of our Galaxy; the spectra and classification of active galactic nuclei, the properties of their host galaxies, their cosmological distribution and evolution, the role of stars and thehydrodynamics of the interstellar medium in the nuclei; the description of the inner parsec of a standard active galactic nucleus based on direct interpretation of the observations; the infrared activity of galaxies; the physics of radio galaxies and their jets, emphasizing the physics ofgas flow and high-energy particle interactions as well as shock acceleration. These are all discussed in considerable depth and presented inself-contained chapters with exhaustive reference lists of the scientific literature.

Extinction and standardization corrections to infrared measurements are of the utmost importance in astronomy. Various views on these concepts and problems of implementation in infrared photometry are discussed thoroughly and recommendations are presented. Among these are: the adoption of narrower broad-band "Johnson" filters that are better centered in the atmospheric water windows than is currently the case; the measurements of atmospheric water vapor content concurrent with the astronomical measurements; the use of appropriate atmospheric models to treat the extinction adequately; and the publication of complete details of the systemic passbands and their transformability to other systems. To conclude the volume, R. Bell summarizes and comments on the contributions to the symposium, and the editor adds a concluding postscript on post-meeting developments and perspectives.

Climate models show that climate change is not a uniform process. Areas of increased temperature are situated near areas of decreased temperature, areas with increased precipitation adjoin areas of drought. This is one of the reasons why climate change is so difficult to detect. Any parameter must be considered and tested locally or regionally and not on an average globally. This book gives an overview of current research methods and results in the different fields of climate research including modelling. In addition, it contains a hemisphere-wide stratigraphic data base with about 80000 species. All paleoclimatic data as well as a state-of-the-art atmospheric circulation model in a PC version are included. So both research and graduate teaching are supported with high-end software running on affordable computers, also in those countries that have no access to Cray super computers. Thus, this book will be of interest to all researchers and scientists in the field of climatology.

The observational evidence for the existence of black holes has grown significantly over recent decades. Stellar-mass black holes are detected as X-ray sources in binary systems, while supermassive black holes, with masses more than a million times the mass of the Sun, lurk in the nuclei of galaxies. These proceedings provide a useful and up-to-date overview of the observations of black holes in binaries, in the center of the Milky Way, and in the nuclei of galaxies, presented by leading expert astronomers. Special attention is given to the formation (including the recent evidence from gamma-ray bursts), physical properties, and demographics of black holes.

17 readable articles give a thorough and self-contained overview of recent developments in relativistic gravity research. The subjects covered are: gravitational lensing, the general relativistic n-body problem, observable effects in the solar system, gravitational waves and their interferometric detection, very-long-baseline interferometry, international atomic time, lunar laser- ranging measurements, measurement ofthe gravitomagnetic field of the Earth, fermion and boson stars and black holes with hair, rapidly rotating neutron stars, matter wave interferometry, and the laboratory test of Newton's law of gravity.Any scientist interested in experimentally or observatio- nally oriented relativistic gravity will read the book with profit. In addition, it is perfectly suited as a complementary text for courses on general relativity and relativistic astrophysics.

This book deals with the relationship between gravitation and elementary particle physics, and the implications of these subjects for astrophysics. There has, in recent years, been renewed interest in theories that connect up gravitation and particle physics, and in the astrophysical consequences of such theories. Some of these accounts involve a time-variation of the Newtonian gravitational parameter, G. In this respect, the present book may be regarded as a companion to my Cosmology and Geophysics (Hilger, Bristol, 1978). There is some overlap as regards the discussion of G-variability, but the emphasis in the present book is on astrophysics while the emphasis in the other one is on geophysics. The subject is a very broad one indeed, and in giving a review of it I have adopted a somewhat unorthodox way of presenting the material involved. The main reason for this is that a review of such a wide subject should aim at two levels: the level of the person who is interested in it, and the level of the person who is professionally engaged in research into it. To achieve such a two-level coverage, I have split the text up into two parts. The first part (Chapters 1-7) represents a relatively non-technical overview of the subject, while the second part (Chapters 8-11) represents a technical examination of the most important aspects of non-Einsteinian gravitational theory and its relation to astrophysics.

The book summarizes research into the fundamental properties of the outer Milky Way (including its mass, scale and rotation properties) and covers topics such as spiral structure, the interstellar medium, star formation, satellites of the Milky Way and the outer parts of some nearby galaxies. It contains new work on the outer rotation curve of the Milky Way, first results of a new low frequency galactic disk survey, new results on the scale of the Galaxy (the distance of the Sun from the center and the relation of the disk of the Milky Way to the halo). This is the first volume specifically dedicated to outer galaxy research. Professional astronomers and astrophysicists as well as graduate students will welcome this book as a guide in understanding the outer parts of the Milky Way and also other galaxies.

The book reviews methods for the analysis of astronomical datasets, particularly emphasizing very large databases arising from both existing and forthcoming projects, as well as current large-scale computer simulation studies. Leading experts give overviews of cutting-edge methods applicable in the area of astronomical data mining.

The book reviews the knowledge obtained from ground-based and space-borne solar flare research thus at the same time preparing for the forthcoming mission of the satellite Solar A which will be launched in 1991. Accordinglyone section is devoted to experiments on Solar A. The rest review both theory and observational facts to give a physically realistic picture of flares, including problems of magnetic flux emergence, high energy particles in flares, heating and flows in flares, and further problems of solar activity.

Distinguished authors discuss topics in physical oceano- graphy, transonic aerodynamics, dynamics of vorticity, numerical simulation of turbulent flows, astrophysical jets, strange attractors, human-powered flight, and thefluid mechanics of the Old Faithful geyser and of the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. The authors deal with specific problems, but the emphasis is usually on the way that re- search is carried out at the edge of understanding, and often on the role of new techniques, instruments, and re- search strategies.

The articles in this book deal with energetic hadron processes near astrophysical compact objects, including compact binary systems and active galactic nuclei. A variety of observational results suggest that relativistic hadrons can be produced in the vicinity of these objects. Amongthe topics treated in detail are the question whether a large fraction of the energy produced by active galactic nuclei is channeled into a population of relativistic protons and the problem of the origin of very high and ultra-high energy gamma rays from galactic compact sources.