Joint Discussion 8: Stellar Evolution in Real Time, Part I Explicit Evidences for Stellar Evolution

Extract

JD8 assembled for half-day sessions on August 22 & 23, 1997 in a satisfactory meeting hall. Between 350 and 400 delegates - about 50% larger than anticipated - attended most of the sessions.

The theme of the meeting developed from initial conversations between R. H. Koch and Y. Kondo and was extended by E. F. Guinan. Opinions from the officers of Commissions 27 and 42 were favorable to seeking IAU approval and eventually the co-sponsoring Commissions came on board.

In essence, all the organizing workers recognized that there did not exist a broad recognition that we really do know specific stars whose evolution we have actually perceived and that there are also statistical interpretations (not the conventional isochrones in an HRD or CMD) for ensembles of stars which lead to the same conclusion.

The presentation compiled here is really a distillation of short offerings from the JD participants provided against a deadline which was regrettably close at hand. A full presentation of the meeting Proceedings will appear in The New Astronomy series of Elsevier. E. R. Jewell prepared the final files.