UC Irvine UC Irvine Previously Published Works Title Astrophysics in 2000 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5272z5d3 Journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 113(787) ISSN 0004-6280 Authors Trimble, V Aschwanden, MJ Publication Date 2001-09-01 DOI 10.1086/322844 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 113:1025–1114, 2001 September ᭧ 2001. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. Invited Review Astrophysics in 2000 Virginia Trimble Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 and Markus J. Aschwanden Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Department L9-41, Building 252, 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304; [email protected] Received 2001 April 13; accepted 2001 April 13 ABSTRACT. It was a year in which some topics selected themselves as important through the sheer numbers of papers published. These include the connection(s) between galaxies with active central engines and galaxies with starbursts, the transition from asymptotic giant branch stars to white dwarfs, gamma-ray bursters, solar data from three major satellite missions, and the cosmological parameters, including dark matter and very large scale structure. Several sections are oriented around processes—accretion, collimation, mergers, and disruptions—shared by a number of kinds of stars and galaxies. And, of course, there are the usual frivolities of errors, omissions, exceptions, and inventories. 1. INTRODUCTION the Astronomical Society of India, Baltic Astronomy, New As- tronomy, IAU Circulars, and, of course, Publications of the Astrophysics in 2000 is the tenth, and probably last, of its Astronomical Society of the Pacific. On the grounds that even ilk. The predecessors, Astrophysics in 1991, 1992, etc., appear review writers are entitled to an occasional afternoon off, we somewhere near the beginnings of volumes 104 to 112 of PASP have reserved the right to look at Observatory, Journal of the and are cited below as Ap91, Ap92, and so forth. In the in- Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Monthly Notices of the tervening decade, the number of astronomical words published Astronomical Society of South Africa, Journal of the American per year has increased by something like 50%, a growth that Association of Variable Star Observers, and a few others just is not reflected for some reason in the numbers of papers in- for fun, without systematic recording of their contents. dexed in Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts (22,848 in 1989 and 24,406 in 1999), many of them abstracts and con- 1.1. Ave ference presentations. But the time required to read the 5000 or so papers per year appearing in major journals has increased Among the entities to be welcomed this year were the re- proportionally and now exceeds what can be extracted from maining three mirrors, at 8 meters each, of the Very Large the authors’ other responsibilities. Or, from another point of Telescope, the dedications of the Green Bank Telescope and view, at its current rate of expansion of 5% per year, a paper LIGO (no published data from either yet), the opening of the copy of the Astrophysical Journal would close the universe by new Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium at the American 4450. Museum of Natural History (which also seems to have begun The journals scanned were the issues that reached the library a new custom of reviewing such exhibits as if they were books), shelves between 1 October 1999 and 30 September 2000 of the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (first two winners, P. James E. Nature, Physical Review Letters, Science, The Astrophysical Peebles and Allan R. Sandage), and the (apparently successful) Journal (plus Letters and Supplement Series), Monthly Notices launches of Newton-XMM (10 December), Cluster II (in two of the Royal Astronomical Society, Astronomy and Astrophysics lots, 12 July and 9 August), HETE II (a second try at the High (plus Supplements and Reviews), Astronomical Journal (always Energy Transient Explorer, the second adjective referring, we part of the data base, but unaccountably missing from the hope, to the events to be monitored, not to the mission itself), printed list in Ap99), Acta Astronomica, Revista Mexicana As- the Shenzhou “unoccupied orbiter” (21 hours in orbit on 26 tronomia y Astrofisica, Astrophysics and Space Science, As- November), the part of the International Space Station called tronomy Reports, Astronomy Letters, Astrofizica, Astronomi- Zvezda (on 12 July), and ACRIMSat (20 December). About sche Nachrichten, Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy, 150 Ph.D.’s in astronomy and related subjects were awarded Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, Bulletin of in the USA during the year. 1025 1026 TRIMBLE & ASCHWANDEN 1.2. Atque John Wolbach, Philip Keenan, James Cuffey, Harrison Menden- During the year, there were some things that came and went, hall, Samuel Goldstein, Jeffrey Willick, Jerome Korman, Fred- or went and came, so quickly or so often that it was hard to erick Hollander, Jean Heidemann, K. Narahari Rao, James W.- decide whether to say “hello” or “goodbye.” Among these were K. Mark, Edward Dyer, Robert Hjellming, Henk van de Hulst, the radio interferometry satellite HALCA (with about three near- John Simpson, Bill Fastie, Donald Billing, John O’Keefe, Her- failures and rescues), NEAR (which came much NEARer to the bert Friedman, Frank Kerr, Raymond Grenchik, and Joseph We- asteroid Eros in February 2000 than in the previous year), the ber (on the 30th of September, last day of the index year and Pluto-Kuiper Express (which was cancelled, but followed first day of year 5761). quickly by a new Plutonic announcement of opportunity), MIR, 2. SOLAR PHYSICS New Astronomy Reviews (a reincarnation of the old Vistas in Astronomy), and the Iridium set of communications satellites Additional journals scanned for this section were Solar Phys- (which really does deserve to be called Dysprosium). A special ics and the relevant parts of Journal of Geophysical Research, award goes to Voyager 1, which has reached 76 AU from the Geophysical Research Letters, Advances in Space Research, Sun (the furthmost the mind of man has ever set foot, as it Astroparticle Physics,andSpace Science Reviews. The cut-off were) and still hasn’t reached the heliopause. date was set, in some cases, by arrival at the electronically mirrored website of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System rather 1.3. Vale than at library shelves. The usual guidelines pertain to this and the following eleven sections. Focus is on papers published Among the things we lost during the year were the Mars Polar during the reference year. Papers on which the present authors’ Lander and its associated penetrators (declared dead in Decem- names appear are cited only if they have been shown to be ber), the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (put into a geosta- wrong. And the historical background is cited only occasionally tionary orbit on the ocean floor on 4 June), the NRAO 12-meter and erratically. In this context, it is worth remembering another dish (though closing a ground-based telescope is generally less of the classic sayings of Raymond Arthur Lyttleton. When it irreversible than the space-based case), Astro E (an unsuccessful was pointed out to him that his stationery, unlike the rest of launch on 10 February, continuing the Japanese tradition of never what was used at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in losing a named spacecraft), Comet LINEAR (whose brief ap- Cambridge, did not mention that Fred Hoyle was the director, pearance in July as six smaller comets showed that there is his response was, “Well, it doesn’t say he isn’t.” And so, if we intermediate-level structure between dust grains and the nucleus, have failed to say that you were the first to sweep dysprosium to be called cometesimals, if you must), and the Irish Astro- under the carpet, there was no intention to say that you weren’t. nomical Journal, which ceased publication in mid-volume after The following six sections explore the Sun from interior to 50 years. It was a somewhat informal, chatty publication (long heliosphere, inside out. Most of the new observations come edited by Ernst Opik), and its loss is yet another in a sequence from the currently operating space missions, Yohkoh,theSolar of relatively informal publications that have disappeared in recent and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO), and the Transition Re- years, including Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical gion and Coronal Explorer (TRACE). Society, Astrophysical Letters, and another journal edited for some years by the more blue-pencilled author and not named 2.1. Solar Interior here for fear of legal action. ROSAT collected a small amount of posthumous data between late October and late December 2.1.1. Neutrinos—Do They Care about the Solar Magnetic 1998, spotting az p 4.22 blazar and the highest redshift X-ray Field? absorption to date (Boller et al. 2000). And ASCA succumbed Our knowledge about the solar neutrino problem did not to atmospheric drag on 12 July. make a critical giant leap with century turn (see the Bahcall Our human losses included five staff members of IRAM killed & Davis 2000 Millennium Essay). Although we still are de- in an accident (to whom Cox et al. 2000 is dedicated), Dennis tecting a solar neutrino every other day with the Homestake Sciama (“doktorgrossvater” and even gross gross vater to a num- chlorine detector, the detected capture rate is still a factor of ber of US-based astronomers), Colin Ronan (one of the great three below theoretical predictions.