K.S. Cheng - Böcker

This volume consists of 62 papers contributed by 120 authors/co-authors working in the field of stellar research. The conference was the fifth of the Pacific Rim Stellar Conference series and was the second time that Hong Kong hosted the series. These conferences started in 1985, concentrating on binary star research. Over the years, the series has grown wider in scope. During this conference, three topics were covered: binary stars, compact stars, and solar-type stars. Though a Pacific Rim conference, many of the 90 participants were from far regions of the world. The contributions to this proceeding are categorized according to the expertise of the participants into the following six groups: solar/stellar evolution and observational constraints, physics of compact stars and pulsars, observational constraints, physics of binary stars, binary stars with an accretion disk, and observations and theory of high-energy phenomena. The volume contains many updated reviews in these research areas and is a very useful reference for graduate students and researchers.

These proceedings collects fifty-two papers contributed by over one hundred authors/co-authors working in the field of stellar physics research. The contributions to this proceedings are categorized according to the expertise of the participants into the following six groups: compact stars and high energy astrophysics, binary star systems, stars, variable stars and cataclysmic variables, and galactic astronomy.

Gamma-ray astronomy has undergone an enormous progress in the last 15 years. The success of satellite experiments like NASA's Comp­ ton Gamma-Ray Observatory and ESA's INTEGRAL mission, as well as of ground-based instruments have open new views into the high-energy Universe. Different classes of cosmic gamma-ray sources have been now detected at different energies, in addition to young radio pulsars and gamma-ray bursts, the classical ones. The new sources include radio­ quiet pulsars, microquasars, supernova remnants, starburst galaxies, ra­ dio galaxies, flat-spectrum radio quasars, and BL Lacertae objects. A large number of unidentified sources strongly suggests that this brief enumeration is far from complete. Gamma-ray bursts are now estab­ lished as extragalactic sources with tremendous energy output. There is accumulating evidence supporting the idea that massive stars and star forming regions can accelerate charged particles up to relativistic ener­ gies making them gamma-ray sources. Gamma-ray astronomy has also proved to be a powerful tool for cosmology imposing constraints to the background photon fields that can absorb the gamma-ray flux from dis­ tant sources. All this has profound implications for our current ideas about how particles are accelerated and transported in both the local and distant U niverse. The evolution of our knowledge on the gamma-ray sky has been so fast that is not easy for the non-specialist scientist and the graduate student to be aware of the full potential of this field or to grasp the fundamentals of a given topic in order to attempt some original contribution.

Based on the proceedings of the workshop on Multiwavelength Approach to Unidentified Gamma-ray Sources, which intends to shed light on the problem of the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray sources. This book is aimed at researchers in the high-energy astrophysics and related research areas as well as for scientists and graduate students.

This proceedings collects fifty-two papers contributed by over one hundred authors/co-authors working in the field of stellar physics research. The contributions to this proceedings are categorized according to the expertise of the participants into the following six groups: Compact Stars and High Energy Astrophysics, Binary Star Systems, Stars, Variable Stars and Cataclysmic Variables, and Galactic Astronomy. The volume contains many updated reviews in these research areas.

This book presents the most updated review of our current knowledge of cosmic gamma-ray sources. Besides chapters devoted to each type of known gamma-ray emitting object, it provides a self-contained introduction to gamma-ray astrophysics, including a description of the relevant physical processes, a guide through the basic phenomenology, and the prospects for further advances. The book will be of interest for all active researchers in the field, for scientists interested in understanding the recent progress in gamma-ray astronomy, and for graduate students.

Nearly one half of the point-like gamma-ray sources detected by EGRET instrument of the late Compton satellite are still defeating our attempts at identifying them. To establish the origin and nature of these enigmatic sources has become a major problem of current high-energy astrophysics. The second workshop on Multiwavelength Approach to Unidentified Gamma-ray Sources intends to shed new and fresh light on the problem of the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray sources.The proceedings contain 46 contributed papers in this subject, which cover theoretical models on gamma-ray sources as well as the best multiwavelength strategies for the identification of the promising candidates. The topics of this conference also include energetic phenomena occurring both in galactic and extragalactic scenarios, phenomena that might lead to the appearance of what we have called high-energy unidentified sources.The book will be of interest for all active researchers in the high-energy astrophysics and related research areas as well as for scientists and graduate students interested in understanding the recent progress in high-energy astrophysics.