... The first book is about observing ­ really a great "how to" guide designed to make one aware of all that can be fine tuned with respect to observing skills. ... For any of you who attended Bill Murray's excellent talk at our March meeting this is a "must read." ... We are truly fortunate to be able to mark the conclusion of the 2002 ­ 2003 series of meetings at Peyton Hall by having as a guest speaker, Dr David N. Spergel of Princeton University's Department of Astrophysical Sciences. ...

... The very demanding goal of 50 milliarcseconds root-mean-square (mas RMS) for the astrometric precision of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey implies that focus and collimation motions of the secondary must be very smooth. The Apache Point Observatory 3.5-m telescope secondary is a hot-gas-fusion borosilicate lightweight (25% of solid) mirror. ... Differential rotation provides tilt motions. ... Also, we made measurements with the indicators sensing the motion of the whiffletrees near actuators 1 and 2. ...

... 13, Moscow, 119992 Russia 2 Special Astrophysical Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhnii Arkhyz, Karachai-Cherkessian Republic, 369167 Russia Received May 18, 2009 Abstract--Using the method of two-dimensional spectroscopy, we have investigated the kinematics and distribution of the gas and stars at the center of the early-type spiral galaxy NGC 7177 with a mediumscale bar as well as the change in the mean age of the stellar population along the radius. ...

... In this case, the main vortex in the Benard cell is decomposed into smaller ones as a result of ten perioddoubling bifurcations. It is shown that the resulting turbulence is coherent and determinate; the fractal character (local selfsimilarity) of its spectrum is found. ... It is shown that the real atmospheric turbulence is the result of mixing of different coherent structures. ... COHERENT STRUCTURE IN A CLOSED ROOM The scheme of measurements in the LSVT spectrograph pavilion is shown in Fig. ...