THE ArAS II ANNUAL MEETING

(combined with XIII Armenian-Georgian Colloquium)

 

11-13 June 2003, Byurakan, Armenia

 

The ArAS II Annual Meeting was held in frame of the XII joint Byurakan-Abastumani colloquium on June 11-13, 2003 in the Byurakan Observatory. These traditional colloquia were established long before Armenia and Georgia became independent countries. That time directors of the two observatories - the late academicians Victor Ambartsumian and Evgeny Kharadze were the initiators of such scientific meetings which very soon turned to be traditional. That time these colloquia had a status of inter-observatory meetings. After these two countries regained their sovereignty, economic situation did not allow the regular continuation of the established tradition until in 1997 at Abastumani was organized the first "after-independency" colloquium, which automatically obtained an international status.

 

This year at the Byurakan observatory was held fourth "after-independency" joint colloquium. This one was dedicated to the 80-th anniversary of late academician Ludwig Mirzoyan who had done a lot to make possible these bilateral meetings, as well as was one of the active persons trying to create an Armenian astronomical society. By the way, five years ago the previous colloquium held in Byurakan was dedicated to his jubilee as well and that time Mirzoyan, although incurably ill already, participated in the meeting.

 

The Organizing Committee of the meeting was fully made up of the ArAS members, Haik Harutyunian being the Chairman. As always the spectrum of scientific reports was very general - participants were allowed to report their results obtained in any area of astrophysics. Therefore more than 20 reports have been presented from theoretical investigations in celestial mechanics and radiation mechanisms of pulsars to clusters of galaxies and quasars. To make the colloquium program subject-oriented more or less, scientific sessions were divided into three classes "stars and stellar objects", "extragalactic objects" and "miscellaneous". During four working days along with scientific reports and discussions some cultural and social events were organized for the participants. They visited the Ambartsumian Museum in Byurakan and Parajanov Museum, got a chance to have a sightseeing walk in Yerevan.