Dear colleagues,
Happy New Year!
Thanks to all of you who participated in the elections of the Organising Committee of the IAU Working Group on Ap & Related Stars that took place end of last year. Nineteen valid votes were received, leading to the following composition of the OC for the 2012-2015 triennium:
Saul Adelman (USA)
Victoria Antoci (Denmark)
Margarida Cunha (Portugal)
Mike Dworetsky (UK)
Oleg Kochukhov (Sweden)
Friedrich Kupka (Austria)
Gautier Mathys (Chile)
Richard Monier (France)
Ernst Paunzen (Austria)
Olga Pintado (Argentina)
Iosif Romanyuk (Russia)
Hiromoto Shibahashi (Japan)
Denis Shulyak (Germany)
Following consultation among the members of the new OC, I shall continue to chair the WG until 2015.
The OC includes four new members. There were in principle three slots to fill for the forthcoming triennium, to continue with the same number of members as in the past. However, behind the top two candidates, the next two obtained the same number of votes. After consultation with these two candidates and with the rest of the OC, the best option was deemed to increase the number of members of the OC by one.
This appeared particularly justified considering the important task that will face the OC between now and 2015, as discussions about the future of the WG will be taking place within the context of the restructuring of the IAU. We believe that the OC of our WG will have an essential role to play in the coming couple of years to ensure that the interests of our scientific community continue to be duly represented within the IAU. But I should also stress that we can achieve this goal only with the participation of the members of the WG: the activity and the contributions of all of you are paramount. Please be proactive, and do not hesitate to get in touch with me and with the other OC members to propose your ideas and suggestions.
An excellent opportunity to showcase the healthy and active state of our community is the forthcoming international conference
“Putting A Stars into Context: Evolution, Environment & Related Stars”,
which will take place in Moscow, Russia, on June 3-7, 2013. I warmly invite you to visit the conference web site:
http://agora.guru.ru/display.php?conf=astars2013
which has considerably evolved since the conference was first announced in ApN in August 2012. In particular, registration is now open: please do register as soon as possible, so as to ensure that you have enough time to obtain a Russian visa afterwards. (Once you have registered, the LOC will send you an invitation letter, which you need to present to the Russian delegation in your country of residence in support of your visa application.)
I strongly hope to see many of you at the conference – this will send a strong signal about the state of our research community. Note also that it will represent a great opportunity to meet many members of a numerous and active component of the Ap & related stars community, consisting of our colleagues from Russia and the former Soviet Union, many of whom have not been able in the past to travel to our meetings that took place elsewhere in the world.
On the other hand, please also help us to advertise the conference as broadly as possible, making sure to emphasise that its scope is much broader than just peculiar A star science: the purpose of the conference is really to give a general coverage of A-type star science and to project this science into the overall context of astrophysics.
For the Organising Committee of the IAU WG on Ap & Related Stars,
Gautier Mathys, Chairman