Fall 1997

The imposing General Assembly at the 23^rd International Astronomical Union in Kyoto, Japan.

IAU meetings make three-ring circuses appear linear and monothematic. During a two-week period, six four-day symposia examine selected major topics in depth and 23 one- to two-day Joint Discussions concentrate on special topics while 50 commissions and many working groups meet on specialized astronomy. Of course, many of the most important discussions occur in small, informal groups of a few astronomers who group over lunch (sushi) or coffee to share their latest results and make plans for scientific collaborations. While all this is going on, a major meeting hall is filled with hundreds of interesting poster presentations that are replaced every couple of days.

Topics cover, as they should, the whole Universe. From the very small (atomic values used in modeling the physics of stellar atmospheres and interiors) to the very large (the evolution of the Universe) to the practical (electronic publishing in astronomy or the latest instruments), there is plenty to interest everyone. One of the best attended sessions discussed the first complete results from the astrometric European satellite Hipparcos. Astrometry is the study of the positions and motions of stars. Although basic to every branch of astronomy, no matter how exotic, these exquisitely accurate measurements are so tedious and difficult that almost no one does them anymore. The satellite results greatly extended centuries of ground-based effort and astronomers showed a wide range of exciting conclusions, some of which showed systematic errors in ground-based results. It appears that the scale of the whole Universe may be somewhat different than we had thought!

Evenings were spent with colleagues at some of the interesting restaurants around town. On Sunday, over a thousand of the attendees took special trains to the ancient capital of Nara as guests of the organizing committee. Among other wonders, Nara features the largest wooden building in the world.

The meeting was not without its political controversy. The Emperor of Japan gave an address during the opening ceremonies. It seemed nice that Japan considered the meeting important enough that the Emperor would appear and give a special address. It turns out that his appearance had been kept secret, first from several of the supporting Japanese national scientific organizations and then from participants. Apparently there was some concern that astronomers from countries such as Korea and China might not attend under such circumstances! Obviously, they all took the issue of royalty as much more significant than do we Americans.

Since my plane for the return trip left in the evening, I spent this last day visiting a few of the hundreds of temples in Kyoto. Since Kyoto was deliberately spared bombing in the Second World War, many of the temples are quite old.

This is my second IAU meeting and I enjoy them more than the semiannual American Astronomical Society meetings. Although the IAU comes with amazing layers of European-style bureaucracy, I find the astronomy to be more balanced across topics; American astronomy seems to have become dominated by extragalactic astronomy. Best of all, I made some great contacts with a number of astronomers working in, or in need of, our automatic classification techniques. One of these emailed me last week lamenting how he missed the sushi dinners we had shared in Kyoto.

The "Sidereal Times" is the daily newspaper of the IAU meeting. This banner and headline came from the August 25^th issue, reporting on a session the previous day given by Dr. Bruce Weaver and others on automatic stellar classification.

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