Because of active volcanism, large amounts of gas and dust particles are being injected from the Galilean satellite, Io, into the Jovian system. The neutral cloud of sodium atoms and the plasma torus of sulfur ions provide very useful information on Io’s interaction with the Jovian magnetosphere. A program called MONICA (Monitoring of Neutral and Ionized Atoms Clouds) was established at NCU with a view to participate in an international campaign during the flyby of the Jovian system by the Cassini spacecraft in December, 2000. Spectrographic observations were carried out using the 2.16m spectrograph of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory in Xing-Long. A progress report is presented here.

I have used the 1.2-m telescope and coudé spectrograph of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory for more than 30 years in a program of radial-velocity observations of binary stars. The program was begun with photographic plates as detectors, but for 20 years the primary detector has been the radial-velocity scanner, which cross-correlates stellar spectra with an artificial mask.

Since some of the binaries under observation have periods of several years, the instrument’s stability is an important consideration. I have therefore been obliged to observe standard stars and asteroids to check its performance. These observations are of relevance to efforts to improve the IAU standard star system.

I will describe the telescope, spectrograph and scanner, and will briefly discuss some of the results obtained for a selection of binary and multiple stars.

The future INTEGRAL satellite, to be launched in 2002, will observe the universe in gamma-rays. Parallel observations in other wavelengths are desirable for many gamma-ray objects, the most famous being certainly the gamma-ray bursts.

In this article, we present the INTEGRAL mission and its scientific objectives. We then give three examples of astrophysics fields for which combined gamma ray and optical observations are recommended. Small telescopes would be ideally suited for many of the studies.

The Carl Sagan Observatory is a new project for a remote observatory that will be built at the summit of Cerro Azul (a 2480 m mountain located near Magdalena. Sonora, México). It will include one 55 cm and four 14 cm telescopes. The 55 cm telescope will be dedicated to supernovae research. One of the 14 cm Maksutov telescopes will be used as an autoguider for the stellar observations. The other 14 cm telescopes will feature different narrow band filters that will be used for solar research. The observatory will be controlled from the campus of the Universidad de Sonora in Hermosillo, Sonora, México (~ 200 km from the site). A prototype of the observatory building has been built on campus and first light is expected by the end of May of 2001. We expect to have an operating mountain observatory by the end of 2002. Some of the unique technical aspects of this observatory, which we believe can be a model for future small telescope observatories are discussed in this work.

The NCU (National Central University) Lu-Lin observatory is located at Mt. Front Lu-Lin, 120°52′25”E and 23°28′07” N, a 2862-m peak in the Yu-Shan National Park. The construction of Lu-Lin observatory was finished on January 14, 1999. The initial assessment of Lu-Lin site started in 1989, after which a three-year project was founded by the National Science Council (NSC) to support a modern seeing monitoring program. The average seeing at Lu-Lin is about 1.39 arc-second with an average of 200 clear nights annually. The sky background is 20.72 mag/arcsec2 in V band and 21.22 mag/arcsec2 in B band.

The Lu-Lin observatory is for both research and education. A homemade 76-cm Super Light Telescope (SLT) and four TAOS 50-cm robotic telescopes for a survey on Kuiper Belt Objects will be the two major research facilities. The pilot program for SLT consists of observations of time-varying astrophysical phenomena. The TAOS #1 telescope was installed at Lu-Lin in March 2000. A 90 KW/240 VAC power line and a water pipe system have been pulled to the site in early 2001. A wireless Network system through A-Li Shan has been operating at Lu-Lin observatory while a faster wireless Network system with 11.5 Mbit/sec bandwidth is under consideration and may be available in the near future for remote observing.

This paper briefly introduces the program, equipment and results of monitoring of AGNs carried out at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.

In this paper we show how inherent features of typical CCD cameras can be used for fast (in the order of milliseconds) photometric observations (FPO), even with submeter class telescopes. This is based on a modified drift-scanning technique which we show to be advantageous for such kind of observations. In particular, we successfully carried out some lunar occultations and speckle interferometry observations using this technique. During the year 2000, we registered several occultation events. In particular, we present the occultation of SAO79031. The millisecond photometry of the event allows us subsequent data analysis for stellar diameter estimation and close binary detection. We also show an example of the application of the technique to speckle interferometry observations. Finally, we present the main characteristics of our project to build a new remotely controlled observatory near Barcelona.

The current status of the 30 cm automated telescope project at Novosibirsk State University (NSU) observatory with Internet access is presented.

A brief overview for some aspects of astronomical investigations at Maidanak is given. An excursus is made into its history and past research. Future plans and their requirements are described.

The specification and instruments for the 1-m telescope at Yunnan Observatory of China are briefly described in this paper. Scientific results observed during 1990-2000 are also summarized.

We have used a CORAVEL-type spectrometer on small telescopes (70-cm, Moscow observatory, Russia; 60- and 100-cm, Simeiz observatory, Crimea, Ukraine and some others) for systematic observations of northern sky stars, since 1987 (Rastorguev & Glushkova, 1997; Gorynya et al., 1998). The typical accuracy of a single measurement is about 0.5 km/s. The limiting magnitude is 14 in V-band. The young Galaxy disk population, metal-poor stars and Kaptein selected areas are the important parts of our program. In this paper we present new results on galactic kinematics and our future program.

In the framework of our survey of variable stars in galactic globular clusters, we tested the promising new photometric technique, the Image Subtraction Method (Alard & Lupton 1998, Alard 2000). We found that the standard deviations of light curves are much better compared to those of the more common PSF methods (e.g. DAOPHOT), especially in the most crowded regions. Moreover, many additional variable stars have become measurable with this method. Unlike previously published data we have transformed our results into conventional magnitudes. The accuracies of the derived magnitudes are discussed.

We present some results of a pilot program to study star clusters with the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) observations. While 2MASS cannot resolve the cores or detect much of the main sequence of globular clusters, the homogeneity and large angular coverages make the database suitable to study young star clusters. We show that member stars are centrally concentrated in open clusters, with a density distribution markedly shallower than that for globular clusters. In NGC2506 (age 3 Gyr) giant stars appear to occupy a smaller region than main sequence stars—a natural consequence of mass segregation.

The mean radial velocity of NGC 288 (accuracy 5.5 km/s) is determined to be −56.3 ± 20.1 km/s which, when combined with the mean proper motion (Guo, 1995), yields a peculiar velocity with respect to the LSR of (u,v,w) = (29.7 ± 18.1, −258.6 ± 18.3,62.3 ± 20.3) km/s. This implies that NGC 288 moves in a retrograde sense with the Galactic rotation. We also derived the effective temperatures for stars in our sample and, as a corroborative effort, compared with those estimated previously from the BATC data (Tsai 1998) by spectral energy distribution fitting. We demonstrate that the BATC/SED fitting is an appropriate and efficient way to estimate the effective temperature of a star.

We identified possible optical young stars in the Rosette Nebula by using the IRAS and the ROSAT databases. The previously reported “diffuse” X-ray emission has been resolved into point sources. Forty-seven point sources are detected above 3-sigma of the X-ray background, and twenty-seven of these have stellar counterparts. Some of the young star candidates appear to be associated Herbig-Haro nebular features.

Useful information can be obtained by deprojection of the two-dimensional images of extended objects such as planetary nebulae or supernova remnants. Three-dimensional distributions (assumed to be axially symmetric) of emissivity, electron number density and temperature might be derived from the deprojected structures. As a test, we follow the iterative algorithm of Leahy & Volk (1994) to project the images of several PNe taken at different wavelengths. This method can also be applied to the images of supernova remnants and galaxy clusters.

Planetary nebulae represent the end product of the evolution of low mass stars with M < 8M⊙. The central stars have masses between 0.55 and 0.85M⊙. This means a large amount of material must have been distributed in the interiors of the PNe. The observed variations of the chemical compositions and mass distributions therefore carry important information about the nature of the associated AGB superwinds and Red Giant outflows. (Kwok et al, 1978) A program for comprehensive multiwavelength study of PNe has been initiated at NCU. One recent study has to do with the spectrographic observations of the planetary nebulae NGC 2392 and NGC 3242 using the 2.16 m telescope of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory. Some preliminary results are presented here.

In the same year as Blandford and McKee (1982), Prof. N. Bochkarev and Dr. I. Antokhin (Bochkarev and Antokhin, 1982) published an article on the reverberation method of AGN BLR structure analysis. In 1983, testing observations were carried out with the 6 m telescope.

From 1986 up to now spectral monitoring of several AGNs has been carried out at SAO RAS (North Caucasus). Since 1988 we have been participating in AGN Watch Program. Since 1997 we have been carrying on an international program that is realised at several observatories of CIS (former Soviet Union) in collaboration with several West-European scientific groups (Bochkarev and Shapovalova, 1999). Some spectra of 3C390.3, one of the dimmest target objects of our program, m = 15.6 mag, taken with different telescopes are presented in Fig. 1(left).

The deepest tradition in ISM study in the optical range was built in Russia/FSU by V.Fessenkov, the founder of Fessenkov Astrophysical (Aph) Institute (AFIF, Kazakhstan) and G.Shain (Crimean Aph.Obs. - CrAO, Ukraine). The tradition was handed over to SAI (Moscow) by I. Shklovski and S.Pikelner, to Abastumani Aph. Obs. (AAO, Georgia), where a catalogue of dark nebulae (Khavtassi, 1960) was produced, and to Byurakan Aph. Obs. (BAO, Armenia).

For a long time 0.3-0.7 m telescopes were used for determination of interstellar extinction in the Galaxy by the standard technique (SAI; Engelhart Astron. Obs. of Kazan Univ., Russia; AAO; BAO and others. The most sophisticated investigations were carried out in Lithuania (e.g. Straizys, 1977; Sudzius, 1974).

FSU astronomers traditionally use small telescopes (⊘ ≤1.5 m, hereafter STs) for both science and education. Russian/FSU experience here is among the largest world-wide. There are only 2 large and moderate-sized facilities in whole Russia: the 6 m telescope of SAO RAS and Russian-Ukrainian 2 m one on the 3100 m high peak Terskol in Central Caucasus.

Equipped with good light receivers and handled by skilled observers, STs can produce first class scientific data. Important results are typically yielded by long-time sequences of observations and/or new observational “know how”: good instrument/receiver design, appropriate selection of objects and moments, etc. Examples of what has been done with STs in FSU, within my memory, (in the last ≃ 1/3 century) are listed below, without a list of references, because of lack of space. The author plans to publish a larger article on this subject in Astr.&Aph.Trans.