News and Announcements
IAU Science News:General IAU news can be found here.
Double Star Splinter Meeting at IAU-GA
Information, selected presentations, and photographs from the Double Star Splinter Meeting held at the 2015 IAU General Assembly are available here.
Commission G1 VP/OC election results
Congratulations to our recently elected Vice President, Virginia Trimble as well as members of the Organizing Committee: Robert D. Mathieu (USA), Terry Oswalt (USA), John Southworth (UK), Christopher Adam Tout (UK) and Tomaž Zwitter (Slovenia).
New Commission "G1" approved
The evaluation of proposed commissions was conducted by the Division Presidents and the Executive Committee Vice-Presidents, who made recommendations to the Executive Committee at its 95th meeting, held in Padua (Italy) on 15-17 April 2015.
Following these recommendations, the Executive Committee has approved the list of new Commissions which you will be able to download here.
The new Commissions are listed in order of their links with Divisions and their Steering Committees (DSC):
- Regular Commissions: the Commission President (CP) is ex-officio member of the DSC;
- Inter-Division Commissions: the CP is ex-officio member of the DSC of the Primary Division;
- Cross-Division Commissions: the Commission is represented in each of the DSCs.
All proposals will receive feedback from the Executive Committee in the coming days.
Next step: Sign-up for Commissions
The electronic sign-up for the 35 new Commissions will be opened on 30 April. The number of Commissions one may join is limited to three. The process will be very similar to the "Expression of Interest" voting that was organized for the Letters of Intent.
However, because elections for the Organizing Committees of Commissions will have to be organized as a second stage, the deadline to sign-up for the new Commissions is May 15.
Splinter Meeting Approved
The splinter meeting for Commissions 26, 42 and NC-14 has been approved and accepted for Tuesday, 11 August, from 1400-1600 in Room 327. The room will be set classroom for 50+ attendees.
There will be a $0 admin/room fee for this meeting.
For AV they have the following:
- LCD Projector
- Screen
- Small Sound System
- Podium Microphone
- Wireless Hand Microphone
- Small Mix Board
- Power for 50 attendees
We have not requested any catering.
New Commission on Binary and Multiple Star Systems (NC-14)
In 2012, the IAU began making changes to its organizational structure to update the Divisions and Commissions in accordance with changes approved at the 2012 General Assembly in Beijing. In 2014, proposals for new Commissions were requested from the full IAU membership, with the expectation that the successful Commissions would be approved at the 2015 General Assembly in Hawaii. We are now pleased to announce that a new Commission called "Binary and Multiple Star Systems" (designated NC-14) was created from the merger of Commissions 26 (Double and Multiple Stars) and Commission 42 (Close Binary Stars).
The merger was accomplished as part of the restructuring discussions at the Division Level, primarily because of the similarity in the names of the two Commissions and the increasing overlap in the scientific topics and research tools in use by the two groups. A review of our membership lists revealed that only 38 out of 504 members of C42 (7.5%) belonged to C26; and this overlap represented 18% of the C26 membership (210 members). We are delighted that the Presidents and Organizing Committees for C26 and C42 had the vision to make this very difficult decision possible. The merger decision was viewed as an important step in the process of Commission reform by the Dvision G President and Steering Committee.
The leadership of the new Commission will consist of representatives from C26 and C42, and the merged Organizing Committee nominated Andrej Prsa (from C42) as candidate for President and Virginia Trimble (from C26) as Vice President of the new Commission. The Organizing Committee of the new Commission will include those members of the respective OCs elected for the 2015-2018 triennium: Theo ten Brummelaar, Patricia Lampens, Bo Reipurth and Andrei Tokovinin (from C26), and Horst Drechsel, Carla Maceroni, John Southworth, Shay Zucker and Tomaz Zwitter (from C42). Additional members of the OC for the 2015-2018 term will include past presidents Mercedes Richards (C42) and Brian Mason (C26), as well as other ex officio members representing the publications and Working Groups of these parent commissions.
Important: In April 2015, IAU members will be asked to vote for the new Commissions, so please remember to vote for "Binary and Multiple Star Systems" (NC-14).