IAU Commission 8

                          Newsletter No. 3
                                                    January 17, 2012


     Content:


1. Beijing - China, XXVIII GA: Commission 8 science sessions
2. President and Vice-president for the next triennium
3. Proposal of candidates for the Organizing Committee for the next
   triennium 2012-2015




Dear Colleagues,

1. XXVIII GENERAL ASSEMBLY, AUGUST 20 - 31, 2012, in Beijing, China. The
next General Assembly is approaching. We have been allocated 3 sessions for
our business and science sessions. Note that the following dates are
provisional. The business meeting will be on Monday 27 August 18:00-19:30.
The two science sessions will be on Wednesday 29 August 16:00-18:00 and
18:00-19:30. These time slots were worked out so that there were no clashes
with JD7 and the Division I business meeting and that the clashes between
the Commission meetings within Division I were minimized - all of which are
in the second week of the GA.

The idea is to make the Commission 8 meeting attractive not only to the
members of our commission but also beyond it and to make it interesting in a
scientific sense as it was in Rio de Janeiro. We would very much appreciate
your input on what could potentially be interesting to a slightly broader
audience including any highlights not planned to be reported elsewhere
during the GA. Please send us a title and abstract for your proposed talks.
The talks will be of order 10-20 minutes long depending on how many
suggestions we have. You may also suggest someone who is not a member of
Commission 8, but has done interesting work with an astrometric background -
we will then contact this person.

Please send your proposals to both Dafydd Evans and Norbert Zacharias

The proposals will be accepted until February 29, 2012.

2. We would like to announce that for the next triennium, the President will
be Norbert Zacharias and the Vice-president will be Anthony Brown. We
congratulate both of them.

3. The Commission 8 members are kindly invited to submit nominations to fill
in four anticipated vacancies of the Organizing Committee for 2012-2015.
According to our Terms of Reference, a member of the OC serves two terms,
therefore the OC members who have been serving since 2006 will complete
their duty by the time of the IAU General Assembly in Beijing, (the
exception is president, vice president, and incoming vice president elect).
(check http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/iau_comm8/oc.html for the current roster of
the Organizing Committee)

The main principles in composing the OC are that they have a high
professional standing and a broad geographical representation. The number of
nominations from each country is not limited, albeit after the voting (by
current OC members) a country in the OC cannot be represented by more than
two individuals. The nominee must be a member of Commission 8 (check the
Membership List on our webpage) and should not have served on the OC of
Commissions 8 and/or 24 in the past. Please check with the nominee about
this and that they are willing to have their name put forward. You may
nominate yourself.

Please, submit nominations to both Dafydd Evans and Norbert Zacharias and
include the following information about the nominee:

1) full name
2) current position
3) affiliation
4) main research areas and contributions (past and present)
5) optional: a single most important paper related to the Commission 8
   activities

The nominations will be accepted until January 31, 2012.


Dafydd Wyn Evans                                     Norbert Zacharias
        President                                            Vice-president