Concluding Remarks

Extract

I do not intend to try to summarize the various excellent papers that have been presented in this Joint Discussion on the accuracy of the HR diagram and related parameters. I will content myself with saying that I found them uniformly well-prepared and clear, and all very interesting. I want to thank the various speakers for doing their work so well!

Instead, I propose - since we are in the Netherlands, after all - to assume the role of the good Dutch pastor for a few minutes and draw a few morals from what we have heard and seen. I think the papers presented point to several important recommendations to all of us, and it is these points that I would like to emphasize.

The first moral that I find in this Joint Discussion is a very encouraging one for those of us who are interested in stellar astronomy and astrophysics. It is clear from this JD that our field is alive and well at the 22nd General Assembly of the IAU. This JD drew more poster papers than any of the other 19 JD’s held during this General Assembly, with 54 papers listed in the programme, compared to a mean of about 19 per JD. In addition, these poster papers come from five of the six inhabited continents, and if we allow a paper from New Zealand to stand in for Australia, then we have papers from all six. Not a bad representation, I think.