Book Description

THE MEETING The IAU Symposium 160 ASTEROIDS COMETS METEORS 1999 has been held at Villa Carlotta in Belgirate, on the shore of Lago Maggiore (Italy), from June 14 to June 18, 1993. It has been organized by the Astronomical Observatory of Torino and by the Lunar and Planetary Institute of Houston. It has been a very large meeting, with 323 registered participants from 38 countries. The scientific program included 29 invited reviews, 106 oral communications, and 215 posters. The subjects covered included all the aspects of the studies of the minor bodies of the solar system, including asteroids, comets, meteors, meteorites, interplanetary dust, with special focus on the interrelationships between these. The meeting was structured as follows. 5 morning plenary sessions have been devoted to invited reviews on: (1) search programs (2) populations of small bodies (3) dynamics (4) physical observations and modelling (5) origin and evolution. Two afternoon plenary sessions have been devoted to space missions to small bodies and to interrelationships between the different populations. The afternoon parallel sessions have been devoted to: dynamics of comets; Toutatis, Ida, Gaspra; physical processes in cometary comae and tails; meteorites; the cosmogonic message from cometary nuclei; physics of asteroids; the interplanetary dust complex; comet nuclei; meteors; composition and material properties of comets; dynamics of asteroids.