Daresbury Laboratory ISSN 0962-6034

NEWSLETTER ON ANALYSIS OF ASTRONOMICAL SPECTRA

An informal Newsletter issued biannually by Collaborative Computational Project No. 7 on the Analysis of Astronomical Spectra.

Number 22, October 1995

CCP7 Newsletter No. 22

Introduction

The first Franco-British meeting on the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium was held from 10 - 12 July 1995, in Lille. This meeting gave the UK participants the opportunity of travelling through the Channel Tunnel, perhaps for the first time. All participants experienced temperatures in excess of 35 C, at the start of what proved to be a long, hot summer in northern Europe. The meeting was sponsored by the Universit\'e Scientifique et Technique de Lille, the R\'egion Nord Pas de Calais, The British Council, CERLA, the CNRS and PPARC.

The local organizers had been intending to provide hotel and restaurant facilities on the Villeneuve d'Ascq campus, where the meeting was held. The financial failure of the hotel-restaurant complex during the run-up to the meeting rendered this solution unworkable and gave the local organizers a lot of headaches. We are indebted to them for the initiative that they displayed in making alternative arrangements.

The meeting itself attracted over a hundred participants. Predictably, the largest contingent was French, and, fortunately, nationalities other than French and British did not feel excluded by the title. It was and still is intended that future meetings will more directly involve participants from other EU nations in their preparation.

Scientifically, the meeting was very successful, as the following summaries of the oral papers will testify. There was a substantial number of poster contributions, and these are being made available in the form of a supplement to this Newsletter. Our thanks are due to Simon Jeffery, secretary to CCP7, for his efforts in preparing the Newsletter and its supplement.

David Flower (Chairman, CCP7)

CCP7 Newsletter No. 22