Summary of Prague Business Meeting
                                   W.I. Hartkopf, USNO

This is a summary of the business meeting of Commission 26, which took place on 17 August 2006, 
during the XXVth IAU General Assembly in Prague. It was chaired by its outgoing president, 
W. Hartkopf, and was attended by the following:
H. Abt, C. Allen, W. van Altena, R. Argyle, G. van Belle, D. Bisikalo, A. Bradley, 
T. ten Brummelaar, T. Corbin, R. Costero, J. Davis, H. Dickel, J. Docobo, J. Echevarria, 
F. Fekel, E. Griffin, P. Harmanec, W. Hartkopf, P. Lampens, O. Malkov, B. Mason, 
H. McAlister, T. Oswalt, D. Pourbaix, A. Poveda, D. Raghavan, W. Sanders, C. Scarfe, 
W. Tango, A. Tokovinin, S. Urban, R. Wilson, and H. Zinnecker. 

W. Hartkopf started with a report on events during the past triennium. He announced the deaths, 
during that period, of members G. Douglass, W. Heintz, and R. Walker and the meeting observed a few 
moments of silence in their memory. 

The Commission then welcomed the following 26 new members:
J. Ahumada (Argentina), C. Bailyn (USA), Z. Cvetkovic (Serbia), R. Dukes, Jr. (USA), 
V. Elkin (United Kingdom), L. Freyhammer (United Kingdom), S. Goodwin (UK), T. Hillwig (USA), 
L. Kazantseva (Ukraine), L. Kisseleva-Eggleton (USA), S. Kitsionas (Germany), W. Kley (Germany), 
J. Lim (China Taipei), Y. Lyubchik (Ukraine), V. Marsakova (Ukraine), D. McDavid (USA), 
M. Mikolajewski (Poland), I. Negueruela (Spain), R. Neuhaeusen (Germany), D. Nurnberger (Chile), 
V. Orlov (Russia), M. Petr-Gotzens (Germany), D. Pollacco (UK), L. Roberts, Jr. (USA), 
A. Smith (USA), and A. Zheleznyak (Ukraine). This brings the total membership of Commission 26 to 
151, from 35 countries.

The chairman then reported on the recent election, in which just over half the membership voted. For 
the period 2006 to 2009, the president will be C. Allen, and the vice-president, J. Docobo. The OC 
will be made up of new members Y. Balega, B. Mason, D. Pourbaix, and C. Scarfe, along with continuing 
members J. Davis, E. Oblak and T. Oswalt. Four new OC members were added rather than the usual three,
due to a tie in the vote.

W. Hartkopf gave a short summary of developments at the Commission's website, and invited suggestions 
for further improvements. J. Docobo then gave a report on Commission 26 circulars.

Andrei Tokovinin gave a brief account of the ESO workshop "Multiple Stars across the H-R Diagram", 
held July 2005 in Munich. Announcements were then made of upcoming meetings, including IAU Symposium 
240 ("Binary Stars as Critical Tools and Tests in Contemporary Astrophysics"), to be held later during 
the Prague GA, and Symposium 248 ("A Giant Step: from Milli- to Micro-arcsecond Astrometry"), to be 
held 15-19 October 2007 in Shanghai.

Reports on catalogues and journals followed, including the USNO CD-ROM 2006.5 (Hartkopf),
the Ninth Spectroscopic Orbit Catalog (Pourbaix), the Multiple Stars Catalog (Tokovinin), the
Catalogue of Orbits and Ephemerides of Visual Double Stars (Docobo), and the Catalogue of Eclipsing
Binaries (Malkov).

R. Argyle followed with a discussion of amateur projects in double-star measurement, including
the efforts of the French Astronomical Society, the Webb Society, the new electronic Journal of 
Double Star Observations, the Spanish/South American LIADA group, and Garraf Observatory in Spain. 
Amateurs are reponsible for over 1/3 of the measures added to the WDS during the past 6 years, and 
many of these measures are of quite high quality. Argyle highlighted some of the major amateur
observers, their equipment, and examples of their observations. He ended his talk with a plea 
encouraging observers to work in the long-neglected southern hemisphere.
	
Reports were given on various observing facilities and programs, including the speckle programs of 
Calar Alto (Docobo), the USNO (Mason), PISCO (Argyle), and RYTSI/WIYN (van Altena). T. ten Brummelaar 
gave an update on the CHARA Array, which is now operating with six 1-meter telescopes over a 350-m 
baseline.

The business portion of the meeting then concluded with an outline of plans for the next triennium,
by incoming president C. Allen.

Following a break, the science portion of the Commission meeting was comprised of six interesting
talks:
Theo ten Brummelaar: The use of an outlying star as a calibrator for close pairs in interferometry 
Rafael Costero: A new SB in the Trapezium
Jose Docobo: The coplanarity of visual orbits in the triple system of red dwarfs Gliese 22
Elizabeth Griffin: The Binary Star Gamma Persei: Bright, but Ill-understood...
Patricia Lampens: The Hyades binary theta 2 Tau
Brian Mason: Double Stars and the Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission

The meeting then adjourned to the steps of the Congress Centre for a group photo.

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