*** IAU Division D  Bulletin N. 2: July 1st, 2014 ***


INDEX:

* Call for Proposals for Commissions
* ATHENA Selected by ESA
* Plans for development of Vietnamese astronomy
* AtomDB Project and Workshop
* Meeting of the German Astronomical Society in Bamberg
* Cosmology with Galaxy Clusters in the XXI Century
* Fifteen Years of Science with Chandra
* The Swift satellite: 2014 NASA Review and Conference in Rome
* Address update
* Deceased IAU Members

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call for Proposals for Commissions

This is a reminder that the opportunity to propose an IAU Commission has recently opened.  Please consult:

http://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann14014/

Moreover, please consult the IAU web site regularly (www.iau.org) for important announcements, not only about the Commission Reform, but also about various topics of general interest for the community.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ATHENA Selected by ESA

by Xavier Barcons (IFCA)

On June 27, ESA selected Athena (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics) as the mission to address the Hot and Energetic Universe theme. The Athena observatory will consist of a large X-ray telescope focussing on two instruments: a wide field imager and an X-ray integral field unit spectrometer. The mission will be launched in 2028 into a Lagrange 2 halo orbit and will last for a minimun of 5 years.

http://sci.esa.int/cosmic-vision/54241-athena-to-study-the-hot-and-energetic-universe/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plans for development of Vietnamese astronomy

by Pierre Darriulat

A small workshop on radio astronomy and astrophysics in Vietnam was held in Hanoi with IAU support from April 7th to 11th, 2014, bringing together the whole, but very small, Vietnamese community of astrophysicists as well as participants from China, France, Japan and Korea. Plans for the establishment of a future National Observatory were mentioned and received as the sign of a growing attention and interest of the Government for fundamental science.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AtomDB Project and Workshop

By Randall Smith and Adam Foster for the AtomDB project

The AtomDB project (http://www.atomdb.org) is happy to announce the release of a new non-equilibrium ionization plasma spectral emission model that contains rates for all ions of all abundant elements.  The new data are available online at http://www.atomdb.org/nei, and will be featured in both ionizing and recombining plasma models that are available in the latest release of XSPEC. These models combine the latest ionization and recombination rates with emission line data suitable for high resolution spectral analysis.  The AtomDB project has also released version 1.0.0 of the AtomdB Charge Exchange model (acx), available at http://www.atomdb.org/CX/, as described in Smith et al. (2014, ApJ, 787, 77).

Registration for the 2014 AtomDB workshop (Sept 6-9) at Tokyo Metropolitan University is now open at http://www.atomdb.org/Meetings/2014/index.php. Any questions about the AtomDB project, models, or the workshop can be submitted
online at http://www.atomdb.org/contact.php.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meeting of the German Astronomical Society in Bamberg

A GRB splinter meeting will take place during the annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society in Bamberg, Germany, September 2014;

see http://www.tls-tautenburg.de/research/klose/agGRBsplinter2014.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

COSMOLOGY WITH GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE XXI CENTURY
IFT - UAM/CSIC - Madrid - Spain
4 - 7 November 2014

Cosmology with galaxy clusters is now entering the precision era. Therefore, it is timely to discuss what we achieved so far and what can be achieved in the near future. The main topics that will be discussed are:
- Past, present & future surveys: what we know now, what we do not know yet, what we need to know soon to use galaxy clusters as cosmological probes;
- Multi-wavelength scaling relations for a robust estimate of the cluster masses;
- Accuracy and precision in the galaxy cluster mass reconstruction;
- Cluster simulations.
One of the key foci of the conference will be current and future X-ray observations (Chandra, XMM-Newton, Suzaku, eROSITA, Astro-H, Athena).

Information at: http://workshops.ift.uam-csic.es/ws/clustercosmology

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fifteen Years of Science with Chandra

The symposium "Fifteen Years of Science with Chandra will be held 18-21 November 2014 at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts.  The meeting will highlight key science results from the past fifteen years and a panel discussion focusing on key science topics for the next 10+ years of operation of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Topics and themes will emphasize high resolution imaging and spectroscopy, observations and theory, including related data from other observatories.
Information on symposium registration, the program schedule, and hotel reservations will be available on the Symposium web page:

http://cxc.harvard.edu/symposium_2014/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Swift satellite: 2014 NASA Review and Conference in Rome

Swift was ranked #1 by the 2014 NASA Senior Review!  The report can be found at the link:
http://science1.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2014/05/15/Final_Report_Astro2014_SeniorReview_Panel.pdf
Congratulations to the Swift team for the outstanding science that made it possible.  This will give us 2 more years of definite full funding for the mission, plus a planning full budget for 2017 and 2018.

A Conference in Rome (Dec 2-5, 2014) will celebrate the first 10 years of Swift activity.  Information at: http://www.brera.inaf.it/Swift10/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Address update

Member Theo Koupelis left the University of Wisconsin and his current information is as shown below:

Theo Koupelis
Dean, School of Pure and Applied Sciences
Florida SouthWestern State College
8099 College Parkway
Fort Myers, FL 33919
United States

Phone: 239-489-9229
Fax: 239-489-9037
E-mail: tkoupelis@fsw.edu
Organization website: http://www.fsw.edu

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deceased IAU Members:

Bruce Woodgate, Principal Investigator of the HST/STIS instrument and colleague of many scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center, sadly passed away April 28, 2014.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/astronomer-bruce-woodgate-inventor-of-the-camera-used-on-hubble-telescope-has-died/

We regard upon his memory with respect and our thoughts are with his family.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you wish to share with IAU Div D any information about matters that may be relevant to the activities of Div D Members, please send e-mail to elena.pian@sns.it by *** September 21st, 2014 ***.  This will appear in the next Bulletin issue, due October 1st, 2014. Thank you in advance for your inputs and best regards.
Elena Pian
Secretary of IAU Div D Steering Committee
Associate Astronomer - INAF-IASF Bologna, Italy
www.iasfbo.inaf.it/~pian
elena.pian@sns.it