The Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill, developed by Ice Coring and Drilling Services (ICDS) under contract with the US National Science Foundation, is an electromechanical drill designed to take 122 mm diameter ice cores to depths of 4000 m. The conceptual design of the DISC drill was developed in 2002/03 based on science requirements written by K. Taylor and the United States ice-coring community and on engineering performance objectives. Detailed design of the drill began in June 2003. Special attention was paid to building safety into the design and operation of the drill system. The drill was designed and manufactured by a team of engineers and technicians from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and various subcontractors with assistance from the science community, the European ice-drilling community and polar logistical support organizations. ICDS successfully tested the drill in Greenland in 2006 and will continue its development to meet the science objectives of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core Project.

The deep ice-sheet coring (DISC) drill consists of four major mechanical drilling subsystems and four subsystems supporting on-surface activities. The mechanical drilling subsystems are a drill sonde, a drill cable, a tower and a winch. The drill sonde is the down-hole portion of the drill system and consists of six distinct sections: (1) the cutter head, (2) the core barrel, (3) the screen section, (4) the motor/pump section, (5) the instrument section and (6) the upper sonde, which includes anti-torques and drill cable terminations. The drill cable not only provides the means of supporting the drill sonde in the borehole, but also provides conduits for electrical power and data transmission. The tower tilts to allow the drill sonde to be serviced in the horizontal position without removing it from the tower. The winch provides a means of quickly raising the sonde from the borehole and providing the fine control necessary for coring operations.

The Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill developed by Ice Coring and Drilling Services under contract with the US National Science Foundation is an electromechanical ice-drill system designed to take 122mm ice cores to depths of 4000 m. The new drill system was field-tested near Summit camp in central Greenland during the spring/summer of 2006. Testing was conducted to verify the performance of the DISC drill system and its individual components and to determine the modifications required prior to the system’s planned deployment for coring at the WAIS Divide site in Antarctica in the following year. The experiments, results and the drill crew’s experiences with the DISC drill during testing are described and discussed.

The Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) project is an effort to address the often conflicting nomenclature schemes used by astronomers in different fields of double and multiple star research, by compiling a catalog of all known binary and multiple systems, then assigning a consistent (insofar as possible) component designation to each component. Components are treated in the same manner whether stellar or sub-stellar (e.g., brown dwarf, exosolar planet) in nature. This effort was begun shortly before the 2000 IAU General Assembly in Manchester, UK. A sample version of the planned catalog was presented at IAU Colloquium 191, held in Mérida, México in February 2003, and a modified version of this sample will be presented at the July 2003 GA in Sydney, Australia. Finally, if the nomenclature and catalog format are agreed upon, a full-sky version of the catalog will be created in time for the 2006 GA in Prague.

The new observing and reduction techniques available to astronomers have led to remarkable changes in the field of double and multiple stars. New classes of companions, such as brown dwarfs and exoplanets, have been discovered. Binaries which previously constituted distinct classes are now observable by multiple techniques. With many long-baseline optical interferometers operational or planned, with improvements in other techniques, and with astrometric space-based missions in various states of planning and funding, the situation is likely to become more complicated. The result is greater understanding for the scientist, but greater challenges for the cataloger!

The “problem” is that purveyors of different techniques use different nomenclature, both in terms of root designation and component identifier. It is this latter inconsistency which causes the most confusion and is the topic of this Special Session.

This talk will illustrate some of the many designation ambiguities and summarize efforts made during the past few years to address this problem.