C41/ICHA activities at the 2012 IAU General Assembly

C41/ICHA Activities at the IAU General Assembly in Beijing, August 2012

The Commission and its Working Groups plan a number of business and science meetings at the 2012 IAU General Assembly. The following programme is provisional; further details and any changes will be posted here as they become available.

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Field Expeditions

C41 Science Meeting 1

Wednesday, August 22

Session 4 (16:00 – 18.00): Rajesh Kochhar, Chair
(Following the invited keynote lecture by Prof. Shi Yunli)
16.30–16.48	Vitor Bonifácio	The mid 19th and early 20th century pull of a nearby eclipse shadow path
16.48–17.06	Françoise Le Guet Tully and Santiago Paolantonio	Observatories in South America: from astronomical expeditions to the foundation of national observatories
17.06–17.24	Ian Glass	La Caille’s expedition to the Cape of Good Hope 1751–1753
17.24–17.42	Emanuel S. Mumpun and Bambang Hidayat	Social Impact of the Solar Eclipse in Indonesia: a comparative study
17.42–18.00		Discussion

Thursday, August 23

Session 1 (09:00 – 10.30): Sara Schechner, Chair
09.00–09.18	Ramesh Kapoor	Did Ibn Sina observe the Transit of Venus of 1032 CE?
09.18–09.36	Rajesh Kochhar	Transits of Venus and modern astronomy in India
09.36–09.54	Lu Lingfeng	Science news or astrological debating: Chinese records of the transit of Venus of 1874
09.54–10.12	J. McKim Malville and John Pearson	The eclipse expeditions of the Lick Observatory and the beginnings of astrophysics in the US
10.12–10.30	Jay Pasachoff	Expeditions to death and disaster: Chappe d’Auteroche and Charles Green at the 1769 transit of Venus
Session 2 (11:00 – 12.30): Jay Pasachoff, Chair
11.00–11.18	Gennadiy Pinigin and Zhanna Pozhalova	The value of the astronomical expeditions to West Spitsbergen, 40 years later
11.18–11.36	Sara Schechner	Astronomy behind enemy lines: Colonial American field expeditions, 1761–1780
11.36–11.54	Gudrun Wolfschmidt	Solar eclipse expeditions of Hamburg Observatory
11.54–12.12	Chris Sterken	Houzeau’s visual magnitude estimates in Jamaica in 1868
12.12–12.30		Discussion

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The proceedings of the Venus Transit Conference (Tromsø 2012), edited by P.S. Aspaas and C. Sterken are available at the Journal of Astronomical Data, Volume 19(1) 2013

The proceedings of the International Conference on Oriental Astronomy (ICOA–7) are available from Mitsuru Soma

The Proceedings of IAU Symposium 278

are now available

Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges between Cultures
(the 9th “Oxford” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy)

Astronomy and World Heritage

The Commission’s Astronomy and World Heritage Working Group is working with UNESCO to advance their Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative.The new web portal serving UNESCO’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative was launched on August 24 at the sessions of the Astronomy and World Heritage Working Group. The site www.astronomicalheritage.net is a dynamic, publicly accessible database, discussion forum and document repository on astronomical heritage sites throughout the world, even if they are not on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The printed edition of the ICOMOS–IAU Thematic Study on the Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy is now available

The proceedings of the Rio GA Special Session on “Accelerating the Rate of Astronomical Discovery” have been published in Proceedings of Science

Site created by Clive Ruggles and maintained by David Valls-Gabaud on behalf of the IAU, hosted by Observatoire de Paris. Last updated: 2014 Nov 24.