The II international workshop on "Data Analysis in Astronomy" was intended to provide an overview on the state of the art and the trend in data analy sis and image processing in the context of their applications in Astronomy. The need for the organization of a second workshop in this subject derived from the steady. growing and development in the field and from the increasing cross-interaction between methods, technology and applications in Astronomy. The book is organized in four main sections: - Data Analysis Methodologies - Data Handling and Systems dedicated to Large Experiments - Parallel Processing - New Developments The topics which have been selected cover some of the main fields in data analysis in Astronomy. Methods that provide a major contribution to the physical interpretation of the data have been considered. Attention has been devoted to the description of the data analysis and handling organization in very large experiments. A review of the current major satellite and ground based experiments has been included. At the end of the book the following 'Panel Discussions' are included: - Data Analysis Trend in Optical and Radio Astronomy - Data Analysis Trend in X and Gamma Astronomy - Problems and Solutions in the Design of Very Large Experiments - Trend on Parallel Processing Algorithms These contributions in a sense summarize the 'live' reaction of the audience to the various topics.

In the book are reported the main results presented at the Third International Workshop on Data Analysis in Astronomy, held at the EUore Majorana Center for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily, Italy, on June 20-27,1988. The Workshop was the natural evolution of the two previous ones. The main goal of the first edition (Erice 1984) was to start a scientific interaction between Astronomers and Computer Scientists. Aim of the second (Erice 1986) was to look at the progress in data analysis methods and dedicated hardware technology. Data analysis problems become harder whenever the data are poor in statistics or the signal is weak and embedded in structured background. Experiments collecting data of such a nature require new and non-standard methodologies. Possibilistic approaches could be merged with the statistical ones, in order to formalize all the knowledge used by the scientists to reach conclusions. Moreover, the last decade has been characterized by very fast developments of Intelligent Systems for data analysis (knowledge based systems, ... ) that would be useful to support astronomers in complex decision making. For these reasons, the last edition of the workshop was intended to provide an overview on the state of the art in the data analysis methodologies and tools in the new frontieres of the astrophysics (y-astronomy, neutrino astronomy, gravitational waves, background radiation and extreme cosmic ray energy spectrum). The book is organized in two sections: - Data analysis methods and tools, - New frontieres in astronomy.

The international Workshop on "Data Analysis in Astronomy" was in- tended to give a presentation of experiences that have been acqui- red in data analysis and image processing, developments and appli- cations that are steadly growing up in Astronomy. The quality and the quantity of ground and satellite observations require more so- phisticated data analysis methods and better computational tools. The Workshop has reviewed the present state of the art, explored new methods and discussed a wide range of applications. The topics which have been selected have covered the main fields of interest for data analysis in Astronomy. The Workshop has been focused on the methods used and their significant applications. Results which gave a major contribution to the physical interpre- tation of the data have been stressed in the presentations. Atten- tion has been devoted to the description of operational system for data analysis in astronomy. The success of the meeting has been the results of the coordinated effort of several people from the organizers to those who presen- ted a contribution and/or took part in the discussion. We wish to thank the members of the Workshop scientific committee Prof. M. Ca- paccioli, Prof. G.De Biase, Prof. G.Sedmak, Prof. A.Zichichi and of the local organizing committee Dr.R.Buccheri and Dr. M.C.Macca- rone together with Miss P.Savalli and Dr. A.Gabriele of the E.Majo- rana Center for their support and the unvaluable part in arranging the Workshop.

This book contains the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Data Analysis and Processing held in Cefalu' (Palermo, ITALY) on September 23-25 1987. The aim of this Conference, now at its fourth edition, was to give a general view of the actual research in the area of methods and systems for achieving artificial vision as well as to have an up-dated information of the current activity in Europe. A number of invited speakers presented overviews of statistical classification problems and methods, non conventional archi tectures, mathematical morphology, robotic vision, analysis of range images in vision systems, pattern matching algorithms and astronomical data processing. Finally a survey of the discussion on the contribution of AI to Image Analysis is given. The papers presented at the Conference have been subdivided in four sections: knowledge based approaches, basic pattern recognition tools, multi features system based solutions, image analysis-applications. We must thank the IBM-Italia and the Digital Equipment Corpo ration for sponsoring this Conference. We feel that the days spent at Cefalu' were an important step toward the mutual exchange of scientific information within the image processing community. v. Cantoni Pavia University V. Di Gesu' Palermo University S. Levialdi Rome University v CONTENTS INVITED LECTURES . * * * * . * * * 3 Morphological Optics.

Systems and Archives in Astronomy: Astrophysics Data Systems (F. Giovane). MIDAS OnLine at the Telescopes (K. Banse et al.). Astronomical Databases (A. Heck). The HST Mission: The Hubble Space Telescope: Year One (R.J. Hanisch). HST Image Restoration (H.M. Adorf). Detecting Cosmic Rays Hits on HST WF/PC Images Using Neural Networks and Other Discriminant Analysis Approaches (F.D. Murtagh, H.M. Adorf). The ROSAT Mission: Mission Planning with ROSAT (S.L. Snowden, J.H.M.M. Schmitt). The Standard Automatic Analysis Software System (R. Gruber). The GRO Mission: Response Determination of COMPTEL from Calibration Measurements, Models, and Simulators (R. Diehl et al.). The OSSE Data Analysis System (M.S. Strickman). Future Missions: The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Mission (C.A. Christian). The SAX Mission (R.C. Butler, L. Scarsi). 24 additional articles. Index.