G. Beutler's Methods of Celestial Mechanics is a coherent textbook for students as well as an excellent reference for practitioners. The first volume gives a thorough treatment of celestial mechanics and presents all the necessary mathematical details that a professional would need. The reader will appreciate the well-written chapters on numerical solution techniques for ordinary differential equations, as well as that on orbit determination. In the second volume applications to the rotation of earth and moon, to artificial earth satellites and to the planetary system are presented. The author addresses all aspects that are of importance in high-tech applications, such as the detailed gravitational fields of all planets and the earth, the oblateness of the earth, the radiation pressure and the atmospheric drag. The concluding part of this monumental treatise explains and details state-of-the-art professional and thoroughly-tested software for celestial mechanics.

The idea of having a conference in Padova describing the results obtained by the Galileo spacecraft and the characteristics of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo began in 1995, when a number of colleagues from both sides of the Atlantic began exchanging suggestions and ideas. Looking at the schedules of the two teams, it was clear that the beginning of January 1997 would be a good time to hold the conference; these dates also luckily coincided with the dates of the memorable discovery of the Medicean moons of Jupiter by Galileo Galilei in Padova in 1610. To emphasize these three elements, the name of the conference was then proposed and accepted by the involved parties: NASA and JPL in the United States, the German space agency DARA, the University of Padova, and the Astronomical Observatory in Padova. I wish to recall a few key dates: In January 1610, Galileo--from his house in Padova--had the first hint of three and then four stars connected to Jupiter. In December 1995, the probe released from the spacecraft entered the atmosphere of Jupiter, and the spacecraft entered orbit about Jupiter. These extraordinary events were followed at JPL by a number of representatives of many institutions and space agencies. In June 1996, the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo was inaugurated by the King of Spain Juan Carlos I, in the presence of Prof. Luigi Berlinguer, Minister of University and Science. These ceremonies occurred as the spacecraft started touring the moon Europa.

This volume presents an analysis of the historical background, current status, and future development of space law by noted legal scholars. It focuses on a distinct and growing field of international law that incorporates both public and private law. Specific areas covered are scientific and technical aspects of space and space law; the United Nations and other institutional arrangements; national regulatory aspects; satellite applications; commercialization; dispute settlement; and case law.

Since the establishment of a special law-making body at the United Nations in 1958, there has been a steady expansion of laws and regulations pertaining to space activities. The result has been the development of a distinct and mature discipline of international law. This analysis of space law by recognized experts in the field will interest scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers involved in the regulation of space use and exploration.

The Symposium on Infrared and Submillimeter Astronomy was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on June 8-10, 1976, as an activity associated with the Nineteenth Plenary Meeting of the Committee on Space Research (CaSPAR). The Symposium was sponsored jointly by CaSPAR, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the International Union of Radio Science CURSI). caSPAR is an interdisciplinary scientific organization, established by the International Council of Scientific Unions in 1958, to, in the words of its charter, "provide the world scientific community with the means whereby it may exploit the possibilities of satellites and space probes of all kinds for scientific purposes and exchange the resulting data on a co operative basis." The purpose of this particular CaSPAR Sympo sium was to present new results in infrared and submillimeter astronomy obtained by observations on aircraft, high altitude balloons, rockets, satellites, and space probes. Topics dis cussed included the Sun, the solar system, galactic and extra galactic objects as well as the cosmic background radiation. Instrumentation for observations in infrared and submillimeter astronomy was also discussed, with particular emphasis on future programs from space observatories."

This book explores cataclysmic variables with and without strong, overpowering magnetic fields. You ll read about stars with densities ranging from that of the Sun to the degenerate matter of white dwarfs to the ultra-compact states of neutron stars and black holes. One of the objects examined and discussed is the Double Pulsar, highlighting what observations have told us about fundamental physics.

Ken Freeman I would like to pick out a few items that I found particularly interesting. The choice probably reflects my ignorance, because many of these topics are no doubt more known to most of you. I am fairly sure that some of them are basic and important. We will start with the first session. There were three closely related papers on the evolution of massive stars, the formation of open clusters and associations and the IMF. We learned that clusters appear to form in initially bound clouds 6 of masses between 10'+_10 M , but star formation is a destructive process. Most of the gas is@ lost and the remaining stars then find themselves in an unbound system, which naturally disperses on a dynamical time. As a result of this, star formation is typically a fairly inefficient process, at least on the scale of open clusters. However (as Heggie pointed out) it seems to be somewhat more efficient on smaller scales, as evidenced by the fairly high incidence of binary stars. To form a bound cluster requires a higher efficiency of star formation, typically 30% or more, and we see how the three papers of this morning session relate: the initial mass function and the timing of where and when the DB stars form dictate the likely fate of the system.

The IAU Colloquium No.49, on the formation of images from spatial coherence functions in astronomy, was held at Groningen, the Netherlands, during the period 10-12 August 1978. The colloquium was attended by 108 participants from 14 countries (U.S.A. 29, the Netherlands 20, U.K. 19, Germany 10, France 7, Australia 5, Canada 5, Japan 4, India 2, New Zea land 2, Sweden 2, Argentina I, Belgium I, Israel I). It was sponsored by the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy, the International Astronomical Union, the Department of Education and Sciences, the Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale, the Leiden Kerkhoven-Bosscha Foundat ion and the State University at Groningen. This volume contains 36 of the 37 papers presented. Nearly all papers are followed by a sununary of the discussion that took place after their presentation. A few papers, published in full elsewhere, are given only as abstracts. The majority of the papers are related to aperture synthesis in radio astronomy; a small number deal with optical astronomy and with applications in acoustics and medicine. The presentations are divided in 7 groups: aperture synthesis and its deficiencies, the problem of limited or missing phase information, techniques for processing and data display, optical interferometric methods, maximum entropy image reconstruction, other image improvement methods, and a survey of image formation from projections. Each group contains one or two invited lectures (see Table of Contents), intended as surveys of particular areas; on the average they occupy twice as many pages as the other papers.

Viewed as a flashpoint of the Scientific Revolution, early modern astronomy witnessed a virtual explosion of ideas about the nature and structure of the world. This study explores these theories in a variety of intellectual settings, challenging our view of modern science as a straightforward successor to Aristotelian natural philosophy. It shows how astronomers dealt with celestial novelties by deploying old ideas in new ways and identifying more subtle notions of cosmic rationality. Beginning with the celestial spheres of Peurbach and ending with the evolutionary implications of the new star Mira Ceti, it surveys a pivotal phase in our understanding of the universe as a place of constant change that confirmed deeper patterns of cosmic order and stability.

This book provides overviews of the new reduction as well as on the use of the Hipparcos data in a variety of astrophysical implementations. A range of new results are included. The Hipparcos data provide a unique opportunity for the study of satellite dynamics as the orbit covered a wide range of altitudes, showing in detail the different torques acting on the satellite. The book is accompanied by a DVD with the new catalogue and the underlying data.

This book, in three parts, describes three phases in the development of the modern theory and calculation of the Moon's motion. Part I explains the crisis in lunar theory in the 1870s that led G.W. Hill to lay a new foundation for an analytic solution, a preliminary orbit he called the "variational curve." Part II is devoted to E.W. Brown's completion of the new theory as a series of successive perturbations of Hill's variational curve. Part III describes the revolutionary developments in time-measurement and the determination of Earth-Moon and Earth-planet distances that led to the replacement of the Hill Brown theory in 1984.

Leo Goldberg Kitt Peak National Observatory Tucson, Arizona 85726, U. S. A. Of all the reasons for exploring the Universe, none is more com pelling than the possibility of discovering intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Still the quest for extraterrestrial life has been near the bottom of the astronomers' list of priorities, not because the number of extraterrestrial civilizations is conjectured to be van ishingly small, but because our powers of detection were thought to be far too weak. About ten years ago, however, the growing reach of ra dio telescopes on the ground and of optical and infrared telescopes in space persuaded a number of thoughtful astronomers that the time for a more serious search had arrived. Accordingly, a joint Soviet-American conference on the problems of Communication with Extraterrestrial In telligence was convened at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory of the Armenian Academy of Sciences during September 5-11, 1971 and was soon followed by a number of other important meetings, notably a series of NASA-sponsored workshops in the USA held between January, 1975 and May, 1976. Since SETI is fundamentally an international undertaking and as tronomical methods and techniques are required for its pursuit, it is natural for the International Astronomical Union to lend its support by sponsoring conferences and otherwise facilitating cooperation among countries. The active involvement of the I. A. U."

Stars are born and die in clouds of gas and dust, opaque to most types of radiation, but transparent in the infrared. Requiring complex detectors, space missions and cooled telescopes, infrared astronomy is the last branch of this discipline to come of age. After a very successful sky survey performed in the eighties by the IRAS satellite, the Infrared Space Observatory, in the nineties, brought spectacular advances in the understanding of the processes giving rise to powerful infrared emission by a great variety of celestial sources.

Outstanding results have been obtained on the bright comet Hale-Bopp, and in particular of its water spectrum, as well as on the formation, chemistry and dynamics of planetary objects in the solar system. Ideas on the early stages of stellar formation and on the stellar initial mass function have been clarified.

ISO is the first facility in space able to provide a systematic diagnosis of the physical phenomena and the chemistry in the close environment of pre-main sequence stars, in the interstellar medium, and in the final stages of stellar life, using, among other indicators, molecular hydrogen, ubiquitous crystalline silicates, water and ices.

ISO has dramatically increased our ability to investigate the power production, excitation and fuelling mechanism of galaxies of every type, and has discovered a new very cold dust component in galaxies.

ISO has demonstrated that luminous infrared galaxies were brighter and much more numerous in the past, and that they played a dominant role in shaping present day galaxies and in producing the cosmic infrared background.

The Solar-B satellite was launched in the morning of 23 September 2006 (06:36 Japan time) by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA), and was renamed to Hinode ('sunrise' in Japanese). Hinode carries three - struments; the X-ray telescope (XRT), the EUV imaging spectrometer (EIS), and the solar optical telescope (SOT). These instruments were developed by ISAS/JAXA in cooperation with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan as domestic partner, and NASA and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) as international partners. ESA and N- wegian Space Center have been providing a downlink station. All the data taken with Hinode are open to everyone since May 2007. This volume combines the ?rst set of instrumental papers of the Hinode mission (the mission overview, EIS, XRT, and the database system) published in volume 243, Number 1 (June 2007), and the second set of papers (four papers on SOT and one paper on XRT) published in Volume 249, Number 2 (June 2008). Another SOT paper cited as Tarbell et al. (2008) in these papers will appear later in Solar Physics.

Since 1967, the main scientific events of the General Assemblies of the International Astronomical Union have been published in the separate series, Highlights of Astronomy. The present Volume 11 presents the major scientific presentations made at the XXIIIrd General Assembly, August 18-30, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan. The two volumes (11A+B) contain the texts of the three Invited Discourses as well as the proceedings or extended summaries of the 21 Joint Discussions and two Special Sessions held during the General Assembly.

The history of the development of Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and relativistic ideas of the shape of the universe, is presented in this lively account by Jeremy Gray. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry occupies a unique position in the history of mathematics. In this book, Jeremy Gray reviews the failure of classical attempts to prove the postulate and then proceeds to show how the work of Gauss, Lobachevskii, and Bolyai, laid the foundations of modern differential geometry, by constructing geometries in which the parallel postulate fails. These investigations in turn enabled the formulation of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, which today form the basis of our conception of the universe. The author has made every attempt to keep the pre-requisites to a bare minimum. This immensely readable account, contains historical and mathematical material which make it suitable for undergraduate students in the history of science and mathematics. For the second edition, the author has taken the opportunity to update much of the material, and to add a chapter on the emerging story of the Arabic contribution to this fascinating aspect of the history of mathematics.

The first comprehensive monograph on this active and productive field of research investigates solar-type activity amongst the large spectrum of low- and middle-mass main sequence stars, and presents the subject in a systematic and comprehensive fashion.

This is the first scholarly collection of articles focused on the cultural astronomy of the African continent. It weaves together astronomy, anthropology, and Africa and it includes African myths and legends about the sky, alignments to celestial bodies found at archaeological sites and at places of worship, rock art with celestial imagery, and scientific thinking revealed in local astronomy traditions including ethnomathematics and the creation of calendars.

In recent years aperture synthesis and interferometry have become very powerful tools in radioastronomy. Investigation of distant galaxies, for example, have revealed structures with sizes of less than a kiloparsec. In general, the study of galaxies has benefited from the great power of these techniques. Radar applications have also dramatically increased their quality by using the interferometry principle. Tracking and airborne radar can now determine position and velocity of objects with a much higher accuracy. This book describes in the first six, short chapters the basics of interferometry and aperture synthesis. The following two, long chapters treat the aspects of radioastronomical interferometers and radar applications of interferometry in great detail. The text offers readers a very good opportunity to familiarize themselves with the mathematical background of these very complex techniques. For researchers and students in radioastronomy and electrical engineering.

Our Galactic center's proximity allows astronomers to study physical pro cesses within galactic nuclei at a level of detail that will never be possible in the more distant, but usually also more spectacular, extragalactic systems. Recent advances in instrumentation from the radio, through the submillime ter and infrared wavebands, and out to the X- and "'(-ray bands now allow observations of the Galactic Center over thirteen orders of magnitude in wave length. Our knowledge about the central few hundred parsecs of our Galaxy has consequently increased vastly over the past decade. The same new instru ments provide high resolution, high quality measurements of nearby ''normal'' galactic nuclei; that is, nuclei whose modest energy output is comparable to that of our own (and most other) galaxies. Theorists, spurred in part by the new observations, have been able to refine models of the energetics, dynam ics, and evolution of the gas and stellar systems deep within galactic nuclei."

This thesis presents studies of the starless core populations of three nearby molecular clouds made as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Gould Belt Survey. These studies combine observations made using the SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera with data from several other instruments, including the Herschel Space Observatory, to identify and characterise starless cores in the Ophiuchus, Taurus and Cepheus molecular clouds. The temperatures, masses and stability against collapse of the starless cores are measured, the latter through detailed virial analysis, including a determination of the external pressure on the cores. The book illustrates core stability on the "virial plane", in which core stability is plotted against core confinement mode, showing that starless cores are typically confined by external pressure rather than self-gravity. It also presents an analytical model of the evolution of starless cores in the "virial plane", demonstrating that a pressure-confined starless core may evolve due to virial stability rather than gravitational collapse, which means that a core can only be definitively considered to be prestellar if it is gravitationally bound.

Turbulence and magnetic fields are ubiquitous in the Universe. Their importance to astronomy cannot be overestimated. The theoretical advancements in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence achieved during the past two decades have significantly influenced many fields of astronomy. This book provides predictive theories of the magnetic field generation by turbulence and the dissipation of MHD turbulence. These fundamental non-linear problems were believed to be tractable only numerically. This book provides complete analytical descriptions in quantitative agreement with existing numerics, as well as theoretical predictions in physical regimes still unreachable by simulations, and explanations of various related observations. It also discusses and promotes the astrophysical applications of MHD turbulence theories, including (i) the particle acceleration and radiation in high-energy phenomena, e.g., Gamma-Ray Bursts, supernova remnants, cosmic rays; (ii) interstellar density fluctuations and the effect on observations, e.g., Faraday rotation, scattering measurements of Galactic and extragalactic radio sources; (iii) density and magnetic field structure in molecular clouds toward star formation. In closing, this book demonstrates the key role of MHD turbulence in connecting diverse astrophysical processes and unraveling long-standing astrophysical problems, as foreseen by Chandrasekhar, a founder of modern astrophysics.