COMMISSION 30: RADIAL VELOCITIES (VITESSES RADIALES) PRESIDENT: J.B.Hearnshaw VICE-PRESIDENT: A.A. Tokovinin ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (1997--2000): W.D.Cochran, F.C.Fekel, T.Mazeh, N.Morrell, B.Nordstrom, H.Quintana, R.P.Stefanik, S.Udry. Attendance: The meeting opened at 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 10 August 2000 with 20 members in attendance. President's report Membership The president reported that the following new members had joined Commission 30 since the last IAU General Assembly in Kyoto in 1997: M.Al-Malki (Saudi Arabia), H.-H.Bernstein (Germany), J.-L.Beuzit (France), J.de Madeiros (Brazil), D.Dravins (Sweden), T.Forveille (USA), D.F.Gray (Canada), G.R.Isaak (U.K.), B.Khalesseh (Iran), D.Mkrtichian (Ukraine), R.Noyes (USA), F.Pepe (Switzerland), C.Perrier-Bellet (France), D.Popper (USA), D.Pourbaix (Belgium), F.Royer (Switzerland), E.Rubinstein (USA), J.-P.Sivan (France), D.J.Stickland (U.K.), L. Szabados (Hungary), G.Szecsenyi-Nagy (Hungary), and J.Vinko (Hungary). The above list includes 6 new members who have applied to join the IAU and should be admitted in the closing General Assembly in Manchester. In Sept. 1999 one distinguished member, D.Popper (USA), had deceased after only one year as a member of Commission 30. There has been one resignation from the commission's membership (M.Grenon, Switzerland). Following the Kyoto meeting in 1997, Commission 30 had 104 members and three consultants. Three years later there were 124 members and 3 consultants, a nett increase of 20. The president noted that at least 10 members either had no email address, or that their email address was unknown. In a few cases their exact whereabouts was also not known to the Commission. Conference proposals The president reported that in the last triennium the commission had received 8 proposals for conferences for which the organizers sought the commission's support. These were, with their respective proposers: Galactic astrophysics from Hipparcos to the future (H.Schwan, E.Schilbach), Sky surveys for the 3rd millennium (N.Brosch), The Sun in astrophysics (P.Foukal), Designations of stellar companions (H.Dickel), Formation of binary stars (H.Zinnecker), Binary stars in clusters (E.Milone), Extragalactic star clusters (E.Grebel, D.Geisler), Radial and non-radial pulsations as probes of stellar physics (J.Christensen-Dalsgaard, C.Aerts). The Commission had given support to all but one (Binary stars in clusters) of these proposals, though in some cases after recommended changes in emphasis of the proposal details. In the last triennium the Commission had proposed and organized a conference on Precise stellar radial velocities (IAU Colloquium 170) which was held in Victoria, B.C., Canada in June 1998 (ASP Conf. Ser. 185, edited by J.B.Hearnshaw and C.D.Scarfe, 1999). Commission web site The president reported the establishment of a Commission 30 website in 1998. The current URL is http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/~phys012/iau30/iau30.html. Although this site still required considerable further development, the following links were functioning: (a) Aims and objectives of the commission; commission mission statement; (b) Officers and organizing committee for Commission 30; (c) List of members of the commission; (d) List of keycodes, giving areas of interest of commission members; (e) Rules for the election of officers and the organizing committee; (f) List of past presidents and vice-presidents of the commission; (g) Report of Comm. 30 business meetings; (h) Comm. 30 newsletters; (i) Comm. 30 scientific report for the triennium 1996--99; (j) Report on IAU Coll. 170, Precise stellar radial velocities, June 1998; (k) IAU Division IX homepage; (l) Radial velocity bibliography and catalogue; (m) Radial-velocity standard stars; (n) Extrasolar planets. Triennial report of Commission 30 The triennial scientific report of Commission 30 was published in 1999 in the Reports on Astronomy (ed. J.Andersen), being Vol. XXIVA, covering the work accomplished in the previous triennium. The president thanked the following authors who had contributed to sections of the report: H.Quintana (radial velocities of galaxies), F.C.Fekel (the Milky Way), N.Morrell (star clusters), T.Mazeh (spectroscopic binaries), A.A.Tokovinin (pulsating stars), W.D.Cochran (extrasolar planets), R.P.Stefanik and S.Udry (standard radial-velocity stars), H.Levato (stellar radial-velocity bibliography). Election of new organizing committee and vice-president Andrei Tokovinin, formerly of the Sternberg Astron. Institute Moscow but now at ESO, Garching, Germany, was appointed unopposed as the new president of Commission 30 for the triennium commencing August 2000. In early 2001 he will be located at CTIO, Chile. An election had been held for the new vice-president, there being two candidates, A.P.Fairall (Cape Town) and B. Nordstrom (Copenhagen). The result, which was announced in June, was 25 votes for Nordstrom and 19 votes for Fairall; a recommendation that Nordstrom be appointed the next vice-president has been sent to the general secretary of the IAU. Four members of the Commission's organizing committee retire in Aug. 2000 after 6 years' service. They are W.Cochran (Austin, Texas), F.Fekel (Nashville, Tenn.), B.Nordstrom (Copenhagen), R.Stefanik (Cambridge, Mass.). The president thanked them for their service to the commission's work. They are replaced by four new committee members; there being four nominations for four vacancies, so they are appointed unopposed. The new members of the organizing committee are D.Dravins (Lund, Sweden), L.Szabados (Budapest), M.Smith (Baltimore) and H.Levato (San Juan, Argentina). They will normally serve until 2006. Four existing members of the committee will continue to serve until 2003. They are T.Mazeh (Tel Aviv), N.Morrell (La Plata, Argentina), H.Quintana (Santiago, Chile), S.Udry (Geneva). Report on stellar radial-velocity catalogues S.Malaroda, H.Levato and S.Pico (San Juan, Argentina) prepared a written report on their work on the bibliographic catalogue of stellar radial velocities, which was read from the chair. The authors of the report stated that their present radial-velocity catalogue is a continuation of the previous version (1991--94) published by Malaroda et al. (A&AS 144, 1). They reported that they are scanning 21 astronomy journals for published radial-velocity data, including all the most important journals. The 1991--96 version of the catalogue has 23358 entries, which is about 10 thousand more than in the period 1991--94. By the end of 2000 the complete catalogue for 1991--99 will be published, with updates every 6 months thereafter. The radial-velocity catalogue can be accessed on the WWW at http://www.casleo.gov.ar/ and enquiries can be directed to the coordinator of the cataloguing programme, H.Levato, at hlevato@casleo.gov.ar. Statement on galaxy redshift catalogues None of the Commission's members working on galaxy redshifts was present, but J.Huchra (Cambridge, MA) sent a written note pointing out the rapidly changing scene for galaxy redshifts, as a result of the AAT 2dF survey being well underway and the Sloan and 2MASS starting up, and also as a result of new telescopes coming online with multiaperture and multifiber systems. Huchra noted that there were 140000 galaxies with redshifts in the CfA catalogue at present, and that excludes any redshifts from 2dF. He estimated that in five years the number will almost certainly exceed a million. A website with further information is http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~huchra. Report on standard RV stars S.Udry (Observ. de Geneve) presented the updated lists of the late-type radial velocity standard stars. The first list is a ``cleaned'' update on the previous IAU standard list, based on long-time-span CORAVEL data. It includes many giants known to possess an intrinsic velocity variability at the level of a few hundred m/s or less. This list is useful for low- and medium-precision work. Using the high-precision velocities from the Elodie spectrometer, it was possible to correct the small systematic color terms in the CORAVEL velocities. A set of 350 dwarf stars is being followed with this new instrument with a precision of 10 m/s and zero-point stability of few m/s, to form in the future a new set of high-precision standards. The initial version of this list is also presented. Both lists are found at http://obswww.unige.ch/~udry/std/std/html. C.Scarfe presented the results of photographic standard star measurements at Victoria, with a precision of 150 m/s over a time span of almost 20 years, with an absolute zero-point linked to asteroids with a precision of 100 m/s or better. The comparison with Elodie velocities shows an absence of any color terms. The current state of RV standards is reflected in several publications of the IAU Colloquium 170. It has been decided that F.Fekel, C.Scarfe, S.Udry, and R.Stefanik should continue to serve as members of the RV standard star working group, with further work in establishing the RV standards. It was noted that the list of standard velocities in the Astronomical Almanac is outdated, and should be replaced by the new IAU-approved list. Proposal for a new working group to establish a catalogue of orbital elements of spectroscopic binary systems (COESBS) At the business meeting of Commission 30 in 1991 it was already recognized that the work on the COESBS is no longer continued at Victoria, and no succession was assured. To remedy the situation, it is now decided to create a Working Group of Comm. 30, with the aim of publishing in a few years the 9th edition of COESBS on the Web. The WG members are: A.Tokovinin (chair), A.Batten, W.Hartkopf, B.Mason, F.Fekel, D.Latham, N.Morrell, H.Levato, D.Pourbaix, S.Udry. By the end of 2000, a concept for COESBS9 will be prepared and the development of the corresponding software tools will be started by D.Pourbaix. The actual compilation work will be distributed between several contributors, co-ordinated by a single editor. COESBS will be continuously updated. H.Levato (San Juan, Argentina) has written that his group, who are already undertaking the stellar radial-velocity bibliography, is able to collect all the orbits determined spectroscopically reported in the literature since the publication of A.Batten et al.'s catalogue in 1989 (A.H.Batten, J.M.Fletcher, D.G.MacCarthy, Publ. DAO vol. XVII (1989)). However he did not have the human resources to judge orbit quality, as Batten et al. had done. It would be relatively easy to extract the papers with orbits from the bibliography already compiled. Report on radial velocities from IUE spectra M.Smith (Baltimore, MD) reported on the extraction of radial velocities form the IUE data. The velocities are determined by cross-correlation of individual echelle orders, and calibrated using the HST GHRS spectra. It is found that the IUE velocity system is good to a few km/s, and that the absolute zero point of the 1175--1765 data is -0.9 +- 3 km/s. General business W.Hartkopf (USNO) reported briefly on the new, 5th edition of the visual binary orbit catalogue, which will be accessible from October 2000 at http://ad.usno.navy.mil/dsl. The meeting closed at about 3.30 p.m. J.B.Hearnshaw Outgoing president, Comm. 30. with the assistance of A.Tokovinin Outgoing vice-president, Comm. 30.