IAU Colloquium, Precise Stellar Radial Velocities

          Held at University of Victoria, BC, Canada, 21-26 June 1998


          Published in ASP Conference Series vol 185 (1999)

          Editors J.B.Hearnshaw and C.D.Scarfe


	IAU Colloquium 170, on Precise Stellar Radial Velocities, was
sponsored by IAU Commission 30 (Radial Velocities), with the support of
Commissions 9, 26, 27, 29, 36 and 42; Division IX was the coordinating
division. The scientific organizing committee was chaired by John
Hearnshaw (New Zealand), with David Latham (U.S.A.)  as deputy chairman,
and included Gilbert Burki (Switzerland), Paul Butler (U.S.A. -
Australia), William Cochran (U.S.A.), Dainis Dravins (Sweden), David
Gray (Canada), Roger Griffin (U.K.), Alan Irwin (Canada), Michel Mayor
(Switzerland), Tsevi Mazeh (Israel), Robert McMillan (U.S.A.), Larry
Ramsey (U.S.A.), Colin Scarfe (Canada) and Robert Stefanik (U.S.A.)
	
        Fourteen years of rapid progress had elapsed since the last IAU meeting
on stellar radial velocities (Colloquium 88), and hence this meeting was
timely.  In particular, the previous three years had seen the first
detection of extrasolar planets, as a result of the substantially higher
precision of radial velocities achieved by the use of CCDs.
	
        The scope of the Colloquium was deliberately broad, and included all
effects on stellar spectral lines which involve the Doppler effect, and give
rise to line broadening and line asymmetry, as well as a discussion of
gravitational redshifts. Thus stellar rotation, stellar convection, binary star
orbits, pulsating variable stars, spotted stars and asteroseismology were all
discussed at Colloquium 170.

	The meeting took place between Sunday June 21 and Friday June 26, 1998,
at Victoria, B.C., Canada. Its venue was Dunsmuir Lodge, a conference center of
the University of Victoria, located on a wooded hillside some 20 km from the 
university campus, but overlooking the Victoria airport. Almost all the
participants from outside Victoria were housed at the Lodge, which provided
much opportunuty for informal discussion away from sessions. Sixty-seven people
from nineteen countries participated in the Colloquium.

	The local organizing committee was chaired by Colin Scarfe, with
Alison Marchant, administrative officer of the university's Physics and
Astronomy Department, as its treasurer. Other members were Russell Robb,
Stephenson Yang and Alan Irwin from the university, and Murray Fletcher
and Alan Batten from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO), part
of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics of the National Research
Council of Canada. Lorraine Charron served briefly as the committee's
secretary, and Ann Scarfe, assisted by Margaret Robb, organized a
program of activites for the companions of participants.

	The meeting was structured around a series of about 20 invited talks,
with contributed papers related to them presented either orally or as posters.
It proved to be possible to allow each poster paper to be discussed briefly
orally as well. The discussion proved often to be quite lively, but with 
controversial topics treated in a good-humored fashion. The difficult task of
summing things up was ably handled by Gordon Walker.

	Subsequent to the meeting, a few papers were published elsewhere, or
were merged by agreement between their authors. Three of the invited talks,
however, were not submitted to the editors for more than a year, despite 
repeated reminders and entreaties. They were ``Searching for Giant Planets at
the Haute Provence Observatory'', by Michel Mayor et al., ``Radial Velocities:
Other Planetary Systems, Solar and Stellar Seismology'', by George Isaak, and
``Asteroseismology of Sun-like Stars with the Advanced Fiber Optic Echelle'', 
by Tim Brown. To avoid further delay, the editors have reluctantly decided to
proceed without those contributions, although aware that this volume is the 
poorer as a result.

	The editors would like to thank all the other participants for
providing their manuscripts, many of them promptly and a few somewhat
more tardily. The organizers would like to thank the IAU Executive
Committee for its support, as well as the University of Victoria
administration, primarily Dean of Science John Weaver and Acting
Associate Vice-President for Research Howard Brunt. Many members of the
Physics and Astronomy Department, and several mambers of the staff of
the DAO, in addition to those named above, provided material assistance
with the arrangements. In particular, Russell Robb, Rob Cardinal and
Chris Aikman set up and maintained the audio-visual equipment and
recorded the discussion, Gerry Justice arranged Internet links to
Dunsmuir Lodge, and Don Moffatt and Frank Younger conducted an evening
tour of the DAO. The entire staff of Dunsmuir Lodge, led by its manager,
Robin Cameron, and its conference officer, Leslie Solojuk, worked hard
to ensure a pleasant and comfortable environment for the meeting. To
all, we express our gratitude on behalf of all the participants.

1999 July						John Hearnshaw
							Colin Scarfe