DIVISION
X: RADIO ASTRONOMY
Report
from Sydney 2003
PRESIDENT: Lucia
Padrielli
VICE PRESIDENT: Luis Rodriguez
BOARD: Leonardo Bronfman, Francoise Combes, Peter Dewdney, Philip John
Diamond, Anne Green, Masato Ishiguro, Leonid Litvinenko, Juan-Maria Marcaide,
W. Miller Goss, Jim M. Moran, Ren-Dong Nan, George Nicolson, A. Pramesh Rao,
Richard Schilizzi, Jean L. Turner
Commission 40: Radio
Astronomy
Commission 40 held one
business meeting and sponsored three scientific / technical sessions of reports
from the working groups and from Radio Observatories. About 30 people attended
the business meetings and about 40 attended the working group and observatory
sessions.
1. Division Officers
During the last triennium, Division X/Commission 40 operated
with a Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) of 17 members. The new IAU Statutes and Bye-Laws allow
a maximum number of 12 members in the SOC.
We had therefore to replace the 9 members, that have already
operated for 6 years, with 4 new members. That was not easy, considering the
need to maintain as much as possible a
geographic equilibrium in the distribution of the member countries and a good
distribution of competencies.
The nominating committee for the new members, consisted of
the whole SOC.
We had 34 nominees: 11 from European Area, 12 from US /
Canada Area, 6 from Asiatic Area, and 5 from South America + Australia + South
Africa Areas.
There were elections of candidates per different areas among
the SOC members and the result was approved by the Executive Committee and by
the attendees at the business meeting.
Luis Rodriguez (Mexico)
was appointed as Division X president;
Ren-dong Nan(China) is
the new vice president;
Gloria Dubner (Argentina),
Michael Garrett
(Netherlands),
Russ Taylor (Canada),
Jose Maria Torrelles (Spain),
are the new members of
the Organizing Committee;
Philip Diamond (UK),
Anne Green (Australia),
Masato Ishiguro (Japan),
W.Miller Goss (USA),
A.Pramesh Rao (India),
Jean Turner (USA)
Lucia Padrielli (past president) ex officio,
Are the continuing members.
Thanks are due to the retiring members
Leonardo Bronfman (Chile)
Peter Dewdney (Canada)
Leonid Litvinenko (Ukraine)
Juan-Maria Marcaide (Spain)
Jim M Moran (US)
George Nicolson (South Africa)
Richard Schilizzi (Netherlands)
Francoise Combes (France) - new member of the
Division VIII OC
2. Commission 40 Working Groups
At the moment three
Working Groups are active:
1. Global VLBI - Chair
J. Romney
VLBI continues to expand
rapidly and a constant coordination is vital.
The tasks of the WG are:
i) recommendations of standard interfaces for data transmitted over fiber optic
links and for “off the shelf” tape recorders; ii)
Studies on a compatible
scheme for handling data from the now incompatible
1-Gigabit recording
systems; iii) Studies on data management for space VLBI.
2. Astrophysically
important spectral lines - Chair M. Ohishi
This WG has the task of
finalizing the list of spectral lines and presenting it to the IAU as a
resolution urging protection of the appropriate frequency bands. This is
particularly important in the mm-submillimeter wavelength regime. This
wavelength regime is the "frontier" in spectrum protection and
management.
3. Interference
Mitigation - Chair T. Tzioumis
The group has the following
tasks:
* Technological solutions (interference rejection schemes,
state-of-the-art RF filter technology, antenna null steering, interference
recognition, and data editing).
* Regulatory innovations: new ways of sharing the radio spectrum.
* Radio-quiet zones: designating remote areas on the Earth's
surface where satellite and other broadcasts (emissions) will be restricted in
frequency and in time, and where future radio observatories may be located.
* Institutional innovations: supranational body to examine and test
all space vehicles for out-of-band and spurious emissions prior to launch;
* Interface between IAU/URSI and IUCAF to the OECD/CSTP Task Force,
which is expected to report to the Global Science Forum (formerly the
Mega-Science Forum).
The continuation of these working groups with the present
chairships was approved.
A new Working Group is proposed by Commission 41 , asking for co-sponsoring of com. 40 : “HISTORIC
RADIO ASTRONOMY”
proposed SOC: R. Davies (UK), J.
F. Denisse (France), K. Kellermann (USA), M. Morimoto (Japan), W. Orchiston
(Australia, Chair), S. Slysh (Russia), G. Swarup (India) and H. van Woerden
(Netherlands).
The proposal was approved by the commission members.
3. IAU Representatives To Other Organizations
IUCAF: R.J. Cohen (UK), D. Emerson
(US), and K. Tapping (Canada), M. Ohishi (Japan) are the continuing
representatives.
The proposal to replace the outgoing member Ananthakrishnan
(India) with H. Chung (Korea) was approved.
ITU: M. Ohishi (Japan) and T. Gergely (USA) will
continue
URSI: L. Rodriguez (Mexico) will replace L. Padrielli
(Italy).
4. New Members
Considering also the new IAU members, at present the Div X/
Com. 40 members are about 950.
5. Presentation of
the special session : designating components of binary/multiple system
After the presentation of Brian Mason, the cosponsoring of
Com. 40 to the Type C resolution on “designating components of binary/multiple
system” was approved.
In particular the commission recommends that a uniform
designation scheme, based on expansion of WMC system, would be developed during
the next 3 years to include all types of components and that this would be
reviewed in time for its adoption to be considered at General Assembly XXVI.
6. General Discussion
The revised IAU
Statutes and Bye-Laws have been
discussed.
The salient feature is that, starting from GAXXVI (Prague
2006), each Division will be responsible for suggesting to the EC whether to
create, continue or terminate a Commission. The Divisions should continually
check how the organization of the work within its field is going on, and some
kind of activity report and plan for the future of the Commissions may be
relevant, for their continuation.
Each Commission will belong to a specific Division. All
those that do not belong to a Division are assembled into the new Division XII
for interdisciplinary matters.
It is clear that the
Union is moving in the direction of strengthening the division structure, and
deleting a number of small commissions. The structure of our division (Div X)
is already quite monolithic and we should continue in this way.
7. Reports from Working Groups and Large Scale New
Instruments
Reports from the following working groups and Large Scale
new Instruments were presented:
Astrophysically Important Spectral
Lines (M. Ohishi)
Global VLBI (L. Gurvits)
Interference mitigation (T. Tzioumis)
ALMA (R. Booth)
SKA (R. Schilizzi)
8. Observatory Reports
Reports on
activities from various observatories, countries and projects were presented:
The Large
Millimeter Telescope (P. Schloerb);
Results
from the ODIN satellite (R. Booth);
The
SubMillimeter Array (J.Moran);
Allen
Telescope Array (D.Bock);
The new
40-m radio telescope of OAN in Yebes (R. Bachiller);
New instruments at the Max-Planck-Inst. for Radio Astronomy (R. Wielebinski);
BIMA
--> CARMA (D. Bock);
The Green
Bank Telescope (P. Jewell);
The GMRT
(S. Ananthakrishnan);
The RRI
(U. Shankar);
mm
Observations with ACTA (J. Whiteoak);
mm observations
with VLA (L. Rodriguez);
HartRAO
(J. Jonas)