We investigate the influence of charged dust on the incoherent scatter from the D-region ionosphere. Incoherent scatter is observed with high-power, large aperture radars and results from electromagnetic waves scattering at electrons that are coupled to other charged components through plasma oscillations. The influence of charged dust can hence be considered an effect of dusty plasma. The D-region contains meteoric smoke particles that are of nanometre size and form from incoming ablating meteors. Detection of such charged dust in the incoherent scatter spectrum from the D-region has previously been proposed and studied to some degree. We here present model calculations to investigate the influence of the charged dust component with a size distribution, instead of the one size dust components assumed in other works. The developed code to calculate the incoherent scatter spectrum from the D-region including dust particles with different sizes and different positive and negative charge states is made available (https://doi.org/10.18710/GHZIIY). We investigate how sizes, number density and charge state of the dust influence the spectrum during different ionospheric conditions. We consider the ionospheric parameters for the location of the EISCAT VHF radar during a year and find that conditions are most suitable for dust detection in winter below 80 km at times with increased electron densities. The prospects to derive dust parameters increase, when the incoherent scatter observations are combined with those of other instruments to provide independent information on electron density, neutral density and temperature.

The theme of this focus meeting is related to the detection, characterization and modeling of nano particles — cosmic dust of sizes of roughly 1 to 100 nm — in space environments like the interstellar medium, planetary debris disks, the heliosphere, the vicinity of the Sun and planetary atmospheres, and the space near Earth. Discussions focus on nano dust that forms from condensations and collisions and from planetary objects, as well as its interactions with space plasmas like the solar and stellar winds, atmospheres and magnetospheres. A particular goal is to bring together space scientists, astronomers, astrophysicists, and laboratory experimentalists and combine their knowledge to reach cross fertilization of different disciplines.

We describe existing research infrastructures relevant for space weather and open issues of space weather research including the need for sustainable observation networks and for high-quality data products as basis for model development. The local relevance in Europe for studies of the ionosphere at high latitude is described. We propose as possible a way forward to sustain space weather research in Europe to establish a European research infrastructure project for space weather research and observations.

After a little more than forty years of work related to the interplanetary plasma and the heliosphere the IAU's Commission 49 was formally discontinued in 2015. The commission started its work when the first spacecraft were launched to measure the solar wind in–situ away from Earth orbit, both inward and outward from 1 AU. It now hands over its activities to a new commission during an era of space research when Voyager 1 measures in–situ the parameters of the local interstellar medium at the edge of the heliosphere. The commission will be succeeded by C.E3 with a similar area of responsibility but with more focused specific tasks that the community intends to address during the coming several years. This report includes a short description of the motivation for this commission and of the historical context. It then describes work from 2012 to 2015 during the present solar cycle 24 that has been the weakest in the space era so far. It gave rise to a large number of studies on solar energetic particles and cosmic rays. Other studies addressed e.g. the variation of the solar wind structure and energetic particle fluxes on long time scales, the detection of dust in the solar wind and the Voyager measurements at the edge of the heliosphere. The research is based on measurements from spacecraft that are at present operational and motivated by the upcoming Solar Probe + and Solar Orbiter missions to explore the vicinity of the Sun. We also report here the progress on new and planned radio instruments and their importance for heliospheric studies. Contributors to this report are Carine Briand, Yoichiro Hanaoka, Eduard Kontar, David Lario, Ingrid Mann, John D. Richardson.

Commission 21 was one of the oldest and smallest in the IAU yet one which underwent the most evolution since its inception. It began in 1955 as Light of the Night Sky (Lumière du Ciel Nocturne) under the Presidentship of Jean Dufay (University Observatory at Lyon). As the name suggested, in the years before space observations, its focus was on observations of atmospheric light which, at the time, was the domain of astronomers. Thus the early proceedings of the Commission were dominated by reports of the daytime and nighttime emission as observed from different locations and different conditions. Our knowledge of the Earth's atmosphere is still shaped by these early observations (Meier R.R., 1991, Space Sci. Rev. 58, 1). Members of Commission 21 were key to organizing interational collaborations to set up atmospheric stations at different latitudes, including in the Souther hemisphere and in ensuring a consistent calibration between the instruments. The Commission also bought in results from Soviet scientists in an era where communication was limited by both politics and language.

The President of IAU Commission 49 (C49; Interplanetary Plasma and the Heliosphere), Nat Gopalswamy, chaired the business meeting of C10, which took place on August 23, 2012 in the venue of the IAU General Assembly in Beijing (2:00 - 3:30 PM, Room 405).

One of the interesting aspects of optical meteor studies is that the spectral composition of the brightness reveals information about the element composition of the solid particles that enter Earthfs atmosphere from interplanetary space. Deriving composition from optical spectra requires understanding the entry process during which the entering solid interacts with atmospheric species. This is especially so, because most meteors are observed at altitudes where the mean free path changes from tens of meters to millimeters, that is in the 120 km to 80 km altitude range within the atmosphere. The ionization that causes optical emission also reflects radio waves, so that meteors are observed with different kinds of radar instruments. Incoherent scatter radar facilities are in particular designed to study the upper atmosphere by using the backscattering from free electrons and are basically High Power Large Aperture radars. During the past 15 years they have been increasingly used for meteor studies. The phased-array incoherent scatter radars that are currently under development, such as the planned EISCAT-3Dsystem in northern Scandinavia, will further improve the spatial and time resolution of radar observations and will allow simultaneous measurements of the meteors and of the parameters of the surrounding ionosphere. Radar backscattering is also sensitive to objects that are smaller than those detected optically, so that the observations also permit studying the extension of the meteoroid size distribution to smaller sizes. In this presentation we consider the possibilities for measurements with the future EISCAT-3D as a new path of studying the physics of meteor phenomena with high accuracy.

The solar activity cycle entered a prolonged quiet phase that started in 2008 and ended in 2010. This minimum lasted for a year longer than expected and all activity proxies, as measured from Earth and from Space, reached minimum values never observed before (de Toma, 2012). The number of spotless days from 2006 to 2009 totals 800, the largest ever recorded in modern times. Solar irradiance was at historic minimums. The interplanetary magnetic field was measured at values as low as 2.9 nT and the cosmic rays were observed at records-high. While rumors spread that the Sun could be entering a grand minimum quiet phase (such as the Maunder minimum of the XVII century), activity took over in 2010 and we are now well into Solar Cycle 24 (albeit, probably, a low intensity cycle), approaching towards a maximum due by mid 2013. In addition to bringing us the possibility to observe a quiet state of the Sun and of the Heliosphere that was previously not recorded with modern instruments, the Sun has also shown us how little we know about the dynamo mechanism that drives its activity as all solar cycle predictions failed to see this extended minimum coming.

Commission 49 (Interplanetary Plasma and Heliosphere) is part of IAU Division II (Sun and Heliosphere). The research topics include large-scale solar disturbances such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), shocks, and corotating interaction regions (CIRs) propagating into the heliosphere. The disturbances propagate through the solar wind, which essentially defines the heliosphere. The solar disturbances provide large-scale laboratory to study plasma processes over various time and spatial scales, the highest spatial scale being the size of the heliosphere itself (~100 AU). These solar disturbances are related to solar activity in the form of active regions and coronal holes. Solar eruptions are accompanied by particle acceleration and the particles can be hazardous to life on earth in various ways from modifying the ionosphere to damaging space technology and increasing lifetime radiation dosage to astronauts and airplane crew. Particle acceleration in solar eruptions poses fundamental physics questions because the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. One of important processes is the particle acceleration by shocks, which occurs throughout the heliosphere. The heliosphere has both neutral and ionized material, with interesting interaction between the two components.

Chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a commonly used method of depositing cadmium sulfide (CdS) films for photovoltaic application. The method is based on decomposition of a sulfur source in an alkaline solution of a cadmium source on the surface of the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) substrate. On the lab scale the CdS film is deposited by submerging a 1” square CIGS substrate in a heated beaker containing the chemical bath. This batch processing method is the one used for record-performing devices. There is an ongoing effort at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to scale-up the CBD process to deposit CdS films on 6” square substrate. Efforts are focused at designing both batch and flow reactors for depositing uniform, device quality CdS films on larger substrates. Batch reactor designs involve reproducing the deposition process in the beaker on a bigger scale with minimal chemical waste, while flow reactors are designed for continuous processing, such as encountered in roll-to-roll manufacturing lines.

Commission 22 is part of Division III on Planetary System Sciences of the International Astronomical Union. Members of Commission 22 are professional scientists studying bodies in the Solar System smaller than asteroids and comets, and their interactions with planets. The main subjects of interest are meteors, meteoroids, meteoroid streams, interplanetary dust particles, and also zodiacal cloud, meteor trains, meteorites, tektites, etc.

Commission 21 consists of IAU members and consultants with expertise and interest in the study of the light of the night sky and its various diffuse components, at all accessible electromagnetic frequencies. In cosmic distance scales, the subjects of Commission 21 range from airglow and tropospheric scattering in Earth's atmosphere, through zodiacal light in the solar system, including thermal emission from interplanetary dust, integrated starlight in the Milky Way galaxy, diffuse galactic light due to dust scattering in the galactic diffuse interstellar medium, thermal emissions from interstellar dust and free free emission from ionized interstellar gas, to various diffuse extragalactic background sources, including the cosmologically important cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations of the diffuse night sky brightness at any frequency typically include signals from several of these sources, and it has been the historic mandate of Commission 21 to foster the necessary collaboration of experts from the different astronomical sub-disciplines involved.

Present were the members Abe, Babadzhanov, Baggaley, Borovička, Bowell, Ceplecha, Consolmagno, Jenniskens, Kolomiets, Koten, Marsden, Porubčan, Spurný, Valsecchi, Watanabe, and Williams.

Applications have been received from Dr. Peter Wheatley (proposed by UK), Prof. Harald Schuh (proposed by Austria), and Dr. Busaba Kramer (proposed by Thailand). All applications were endorsed, with the caveat that Dr. Kramer's application needs to be endorsed by at least one of the other commissions since she has not a publication record in our field.

There have been three international meetings where the subject area of the meeting was to significant extent within the area of interest of commission 22. These were: The Meteoroids 2004 Conference was held at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada from August 15 to 21, 2004. This conference was the fifth in a series of meteoroid meetings which have been held approximately every three years since 1992, the previous one being in Kiruna, Sweden in 2001. Ingrid Mann chaired a scientific organizing committee which set the program for the conference. The meeting brought together scientists from more than twenty countries, to deliver 84 oral and 38 poster presentations. The papers represented the research contributions of more than 150 different scientists. The conference provided a comprehensive overview of leading edge research on topics ranging from the dynamics, sources and distribution of meteoroids, their chemistry and their physical processes in the interplanetary medium and the Earthõs atmosphere, and space and laboratory studies of meteorites, micrometeorites and interplanetary dust were also well represented. It was clear from the conference that the coordinated international campaigns for the Leonid showers provided a rich observational dataset and lead to the development of new observational and analysis techniques. Another trend obvious at the conference was the increasing use of sophisticated large aperture radars for meteor studies. High performance computing facilitates both dynamical model calculations and sophisticated ablation models. Significant progress was reported on ablation models for meteoroids ranging from dust to those producing bright fireballs. Study of solid particles entering the solar system from interstellar space and improved dust measuring capabilities on interplanetary spacecraft are an important research area which links astrophysical dust with solar system dust. The majority of papers presented at the conference (a total of 69 papers) are being published as a special issue of the journal Earth, Moon, and Planets (Vol. 95, Nos. 1–4) and also in the form of an associated book published by Springer: Modern Meteor Science: An Interdisciplinary View which was edited by R.Hawkes, I. Mann and P. Brown (ISBN 1-4020-4374-0). The book will be accompanied by a CD-ROM which includes a selection of conference photographs and the complete abstracts of all papers from the conference. As is reflected in the title of the spin-off book, this field is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in nature, with researchers from astronomy, astrophysics, space science, space engineering, cosmochemistry, atmospheric science and geophysics, as well as others, now contributing to research in the field.

The Working Group was formed at the request of the Board of DivisionIII and approved by the IAU Executive committee in March 2004. This was in recognition of the fact that discoveries in the Trans Neptunian region were repeatedly raising the question of “what is a planet”. The task of the WG was to investigate the options available and give indications of the level of support and opposition for each if more than one option was emerging.

To better understand the processing of pristine materials in comets, we compare the composition of cometary and interstellar dust. We suggest that the deficit of N in comet dust bears evidence for the processing of the organic refractory mantle of pre-solar interstellar dust, unless it arises from the protosolar disk chemistry. The amorphous silicate core, in contrast, seems to be protected against processing due to the presence of the organic refractory mantle.

Interstellar dust particles, which are supposedly aggregates, penetrate dust disks around stars because of the star's motion relative to the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM). We discuss the interrelation of the physical properties of local interstellar dust, the relative motion of the star and the surrounding ISM, and the evolution of the circumstellar disk.

Within the recent years the spatial distribution of Zodiacal dust has been subject to a variety of modelling approaches. Whereas models derived from observations in the visual range tend to demand for an increase of interplanetary matter above the solar poles (bulges), models based on infrared measurements and extended to small r seem to favor a decrease there (holes). The models are reviewed, and the dynamical structure implicated in the models is outlined.