Commission 44: Space & High Energy Astrophysics

Extract

Division XI was born by merging Commission 44 “Space and High Energy Astrophysics” and Commission 48 “High Energy Astrophysics” by the decision at the IAU General Assembly in The Hague (1994). As the naming of space astronomy is technique oriented, i.e. astronomy from space, it covers quite a wide range of astronomy, almost all branches of astronomy are included by the progress of space observations. Historically, it started from high energy astronomy, UV, X, and gamma rays astronomy, somewhat including cosmic ray physics. However, in these days, space observations have expanded to low energy astronomy, such as optical, infrared, submillimeter and even radio waves(Space VLBI).