Read more
The past year has produced some of the most exciting results in the history of astronomy, particularly in the area of planets outside our solar system. Only a half-year before our meeting in Toledo, Spain, the first unambiguous detection of planet-sized masses orbiting main sequence stars were reported. Since that time, evidence for a new exo planet has been reported almost at the rate of about once per month. Some of these objects are likely to turn out to be very low-mass stars, but something like half show characteristics - Jupiter-like mass and near-zero orbital eccentricity - which appear to be unique to planets. Almost at the same time that giant planets were being discovered regularly, the two major space agencies, ESA and NASA, have iden tified searches for and detailed study of Earth-like planets as a major priority for the future. In ESA's "Horizon 2000 Plus" programme, an infrared interferometer has been proposed as a possible future Cor nerstone mission. Similarly, scientists in the US produced the "Road Map for the Exploration of Neighboring Planetary Systems (ExNPS)", which provided NASA with a long-term plan which leads also to an infrared interferometer in space to study hypothetical Earth-like worlds beyond our Solar System. Such an observatory is designed to search for the thermal emission from a family of planets, using interferometric nulling to remove the contaminating light from the central star.
List of contents
1. Scientific Case.- The formation of planetary systems (invited).- High resolution spectroscopy of Vega-like stars.- Infrared observations of planetary atmospheres (invited).- Detection of planets via microlensing (invited).- Detection of planetary spectral features through circumstellar dust: a montecarlo simulation.- Evolution and spectra of extrasolar giant planets (invited).- Life signatures on exoplanets (invited).- Molecular gas production in the ?-Pictoris disk.- Planets in CM-Draconis: a multi-site photometric search.- Epicurus was right: other worlds exist! (invited).- Array configurations to detect and characterize extrasolar planets with a space infrared interferometer.- Resolving disks in YSOs (invited).- Ground-based optical/IR long baseline interferometry (invited).- Infrared interferometry with the VLTI.- Imaging with a space-based infrared interferometer (invited).- Infrared interferometry of active galaxies (invited).- Dusty disks around main sequence stars (invited).- Comet-like bodies around the Herbig Ae star BF Ori.- Stellar death: ejecta and circumstellar matter (invited).- 2. Instrumental and Technical Cases.- Kilometric baseline space interferometry (invited).- The measurement of directional radiative properties with applications to passively cooled space telescopes.- Concepts for a precursor space interferometry mission with a microsatellite.- Light weight SiC foamed mirror for telescope to be operated in space.- Recent advances in cryogenic optics technology for space infrared telescope and interferometer systems (invited).- Interfero-coronagraphy using pupil ?-rotation.- ASIX: the ASTRO-SPAS interferometer experiment.- Passive cooling of infrared interferometers in space (invited).- FLITE: free-flyer laser interferometer technologyexperiment.- Advances in satellite data compression and noisefiltering by virtue of parallel computing.- Design of infrared space interferometers (invited).- The next generation space telescope (NGST).- High accuracy optical visibilities on long baselines: first results and prospects.- The COAST project (invited).- Prospects for direct imaging from the ground (invited).- Active cooling systems (invited).- Space interferometry mission (invited).- The infrared imaging surveyor (IRIS) project.- Planet finder options II (invited).- Planet finder options III (invited).- Workshop Summary (invited).- Object Index.- Author Index.
