PREFACE

The idea for another conference on the theme of Infrwed Astronomy with goes back to March 1987. At a party held in my home at the end of the Hilo conference, excitement was running high and everyone present was in favor of another meeting. I recall suggesting to Al Fowler that the next meeting could‘be in Tucson. Despite Al’s reply to the effect that Hawaii was a much nicer location, a meeting was held in Tucson three years later. That meeting focussed more on the astrophysics which had been accomplished with the detectors, rather than on techniques and methods. However, it was already apparent in February of 1990 that a new generation of larger IR arrays would soon supersede the 64x64 class of devices and so, having just moved from the UK Infrared Telescope unit in Hawaii to join with Eric Becklin in his move to UCLA, it seemed to me that another Hilo-style conference was appropriate, and Eric agreed. From the outset, the goal of the organizing committees for this meeting, was to bring together the widest range of astronomers using infrared arcompanies who rays and to make a special effort to involve the industrial manufacture IK arrays. We wanted a meeting format which would enable everyone to appreciate the progress of the technology by demonstrating its applications. In addition, we hoped the meeting would act as a forum for the exchange of ideas on methods of use, data reduction and new directions for the future. Most people took the widespread availability of 256x256 pixel arrays to be the intended “Next Generation” theme. However, another interpretation soon became apparent when detector manufacturers announced plans for much larger format arrays to be built over the next few years; up to 1024x1024 in the case of the near infrared devices. We were confident that the meeting would be popular, but to be truthful, we did not anticipate the overwhelming response. It soon became very clear that the number of submitted papers was far in excess of what could be accommodated in oral presentations alone; a large poster session would be needed. Despite the inherent problems of allowing the number of participants to grow, we decided not to imposes any limits. The outcome was a truly international meeting, with over 300 participants and over 180 papers presented. The highlight of the meeting was the special “Meet the Industry” evening event. Although preceded by a full day of sessions and an open-air barbecue, this evening session attracted full attendance, and many people remarked on how attentive the audience remained right up to adjournment at 9:30pm!

Arrays actually

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MCLEAN

This meeting would not have been possible without the assistance and support of a great many people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. We received financial support from UCLA, NSF and NASA, and corporate support from Rockwell International and Hughes-SBRC. Several companies also donated time and effort to set up display stands at their own expense. We are grateful to the hosts of our two excursions, Dr. Rich Capps (JPL) and Dr. Kadri Vural (Rockwell International Science Center). Eric and I are also grateful to the members of the international Scientific Organizing Committee for their suggestions and solid support; Tom Soifer (Caltech), Mike Werner (JPL), Barbara Jones (UCSD), Marcia Rieke (UA), Reinhard Genzel (MPI) and Catherine Cesarsky (S Ap.). We would also like to thank Roberto Peccei, Chairman of the UCLA Physics Department and Mark Morris, Chairman of the Department of Astronomy, as well as our colleagues Mike Jura, Ben Zuckerman and David Cline who were largely responsible for attracting Eric and I to UCLA. An incredible amount of work has been done by the Local Organizing Committee and by our UCLA graduate students. I am especially grateful to Murray Silverstone, Robert Hurt and Greg Schultz who eagerly designed the logo and T-shirts, but I would like to thank all of the “blue-shirt” volunteers for their help. I am personally grateful to the staff and students of the UCLA Infrared Imaging Detector Lab who have supported me so well over the past 3 years; it has been a stiff uphill climb to establish our new instrumentation program and I could not have wished for a better team. I am especially grateful to George Brims, John Canfield, Nick Magnone, Frank Henriquez and Dr. Tim Liu. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the guidance and support by Jim Kolonko who kept our finances in order. As with every big conference of this kind, there is always one key person who holds things together and attends to all the details. For us, that person was Melinda Laraneta. I can’t thank her enough for all her support. During the editing phase I was also assisted by my niece Vi&i Parton and by Carla Lastrico. I hope you are happy with the way the book has turned out. Page limitations do not do justice to the many spectacular results which we saw, and I was forced to edit some contributions to stay within our page limit. Nevertheless, I hope the book is sufficiently accurate and attractive to remind you of this enjoyable meeting at Sunset Village, UCLA. Thank you all for coming. Ian McLean October 1993