Our knowledge of the environment of the nucleus of our galaxy has been greatly enhanced, by more extensive and sensitive observations at radio and infrared wavelengths, the advent of high resolution x-ray imaging and spectroscopy, and considerable theoretical activity to understand the nucleus and its components, and their activity. The Galactic Center Workshop 2002 was organized to review recent research on the galactic center, including the latest state-of-the-art observations and important theoretical developments. The workshop covered phenomena on scales ranging from the central several hundred parsecs to the central parsec and within. Each topic was approached from both multi-wavelength observational and theoretical perspectives.

"Hosted by Gemini Observatory during the week of November 3-8 in Hawaii. Called 'The Central 300 Parsecs, ' the conference was sponsored by several observatories on Mauna Kea to stimulate discussions on the galactic core. The conference was held at the Keauhou Beach Resort in Kailua-Kona, on the west side of the Big Island."-

The Cologne-Bonn-Zermatt symposium is a well established series of conferences, occurring on a 5-year cycle, on the dense interstellar medium and related topics. The main results constitute valuable proceedings that offer everyone working in this field an authoritative and comprehensive source of reference.

The field of Adaptive Optics (AO) for astronomy has matured in recent years, and diffraction-limited image resolution in the near-infrared is now routinely achieved by ground-based 8 to 10m class telescopes. This book presents the proceedings of the ESO Workshop on Science with Adaptive Optics held in the fall of 2003. The book provides an overview on AO instrumentation, data acquisition and reduction strategies, and covers observations of the sun, solar system objects, circumstellar disks, substellar companions, HII regions, starburst environments, late-type stars, the galactic center, active galaxies, and quasars. The contributions present a vivid picture of the multitude of science topics being addressed by AO in observational astronomy.

The Fourth International Conference on Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model (BEYOND THE DESERT '03 - Accelerator, Non-accelerator and Space Approaches) was held during June 9-14, 2003 at Castle Ringberg, Tegernsee, Germany. Traditionally the Scientific Program of the BEYOND conferences, which we started in 1997, covers most of the prominent topics of modern par ticle physics and astrophysics (see CERN Courier November 1997, pp. 16-18, and March 2003, pp. 29-30). At this conference one of the topics on which we put major emphasis were new theoretical developments in extensions of the Stan dard Model by Supergravity - which had its twentieth birthday in this year -, by Superstrings and by Extra Dimensions. Two of the 'inventors' of the first superspace formulation of supergravity - Pran Nath and Richard Arnowit- were participants at this meeting. These topics were discussed by Pran Nath (Boston), Dick Arnowitt (Texas A&M) - who concentrated on the connection to dark matter and g-2 of the muon -, A. E. Faraggi (Oxford, UK), R. E. Allen (Texas A&M) and A. Kobakhidse (Helsinki Univ. ). Fundamental symmetries, including CP violation beyond the Standard Mo del, a possible time variation of the QCD scale, and the status of preons, were dis cussed by Peter Herczeg (Los Alamos), M. N. Rebelo (Lisboa, Portugal), R. Leh nert (Algarve Univ., Portugal), Harald Fritzsch (Munich) and S. Fredriksson (Lulea Univ., Sweden)."

This book introduces an analytic method to describe the shadow of black holes. As an introduction, it presents a survey of the attempts to observe the shadow of galactic black holes. Based on a detailed discussion of the Plebański–Demiański class of space-times, the book derives analytical formulas for the photon regions and for the boundary curve of the shadow as seen by an observer in the domain of outer communication. It also analyzes how the shadow depends on the motion of the observer. For all cases, the photon regions and shadows are visualized for various values of the parameters. Finally, it considers how the analytical formulas can be used for calculating the horizontal and vertical angular diameters of the shadow, and estimates values for the black holes at the centers of our Galaxy near Sgr A* and of the neighboring galaxy M87.

The prestigious Identification of Dark Matter workshop series was initiated to assess the status of work that attempts to identify the constitution of dark matter. In particular, it aims to review the success of current methods that are used in the search for dark matter, as well as the new techniques that are likely to improve prospects for detecting possible dark matter candidates in the future. In the 5th International Workshop, special emphasis was placed on the recent results obtained in experiments searching for baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter. This volume comprises the high-quality review articles and papers contributed by leaders and promising young physicists who attended the conference. It provides the most recent updates on dark matter searches from both experimental and theoretical points of view.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Engineering & Physical Sciences

Supermassive black holes are now believed to play an important role in the evolution of the Universe. Every respectable galaxy hosts in its center a black hole that appears to regulate the growth of the galaxy itself. In this book, leading experts in the field review the most recent theoretical and observational results on the following topics: - formation and growth of the first black holes in the Universe and their role in the formation and evolution of galaxies - the physics of black-hole accretion and the production of relativistic jets - binary black-hole mergers and gravitational radiation. Theoretical work is supplemented by the most recent exciting results from space and ground based observatories. This volume is useful research and reference tool for the entire astrophysical community.

Until Karl Jansky's 1933 discovery of radio noise from the Milky Way, astronomy was limited to observation by visible light. Radio astronomy opened a new window on the Universe, leading to the discovery of quasars, pulsars, the cosmic microwave background, electrical storms on Jupiter, the first extrasolar planets, and many other unexpected and unanticipated phenomena. Theory generally played little or no role – or even pointed in the wrong direction. Some discoveries came as a result of military or industrial activities, some from academic research intended for other purposes, some from simply looking with a new technique. Often it was the right person, in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing – or sometimes the wrong thing. Star Noise tells the story of these discoveries, the men and women who made them, the circumstances which enabled them, and the surprising ways in which real-life scientific research works.

The Marcel Grossmann Meetings are three-yearly forums that meet to discuss recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, emphasizing their mathematical foundations, physical predictions and experimental tests. These meetings aim to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scientists, to deepen our understanding of space-time structures, and to review the status of ongoing experiments and observations testing Einstein's theory of gravitation either from ground or space-based experiments. Since the first meeting in 1975 in Trieste, Italy, which was established by Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam, the range of topics presented at these meetings has gradually widened to accommodate issues of major scientific interest, and attendance has grown to attract more than 900 participants from over 80 countries.This proceedings volume of the eleventh meeting in the series, held in Berlin in 2006, highlights and records the developments and applications of Einstein's theory in diverse areas ranging from fundamental field theories to particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, made possible by unprecedented technological developments in experimental and observational techniques from space, ground and underground observatories. It provides a broad sampling of the current work in the field, especially relativistic astrophysics, including many reviews by leading figures in the research community.