The tradition of regular Friday SRCfTA meetings continued through 1997, with a mixture of invited talks and more informal presentations. The majority of the talks were relatively formal research seminars presented by invited speakers drawn from the pool of visitors to the Special Research Centre and the other departments comprising the Institute of Astronomy, and from other astrophysics institutions in Sydney. The informal discussions by staff and students, held on average about once a month, are more directed to the members of the SRCfTA itself and focus on an issue from a current research project of a research student or staff member. The aim is to promote an awareness within the group of the details of each others research, and to stimulate discussion that uses the expertise of the group as a whole to help resolve problems and suggest new ways forward.
The staff and the students of the SRCfTA also play a very active role in the Journal Club of the Institute of Astronomy, the ``conversazione'' of the Sir Frank Packer Theoretical Physics Department, and the Colloquia of the School of Physics.
Members of the Special Research Centre were involved in three working groups throughout the year, the pulsar lunches, the supernova remnant group and a group working on scintillations.
Astronomers interested in all aspects of pulsar research from both the SRCfTA and the ATNF meet regularly at lunchtime on Wednesdays. Over sandwiches, they discuss interesting and new results, review papers from the literature, and get inputs from others on current problems and other issues.
During 1997, two PhD students were working in the general area of scintillation (see Research Highlight 4.2). On Friday mornings, on a semi-regular basis, the students met with Simon Johnston, Don Melrose, and Mark Walker, and occasionally Dan Stinebring, to discuss progress on their projects and to help work through particular problem areas.
The 1997 Elizabeth and Frederick White Conference, one of a series of conferences sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science, was organized by Mark Walker and Simon Johnston. The two-day event (on the topic of Interstellar Scintillations) was held in July to take advantage of the visit of the IVP participant Carl Gwinn (UCSB) and attracted a number of other distinguished overseas participants such as Jim Cordes (Cornell U.) and Barney Rickett (UCSD), as well as about 40 Australian scientists. The talks generated lively debate that stretched the timetable to the limits. The conference was written up in the Australian Academy of Science Newsletter.
SRCfTA co-sponsored with ESO and the ATNF, the ``Looking Deep in the Southern Sky'' meeting, held from 10 - 12 December at the NSW State Library in Sydney. Approximately 110 attendees, including 50 from overseas, discussed current and planned surveys of the southern sky covering most of the electromagnetic spectrum. The meeting focused particularly on how these surveys will feed the new generation of 8-m telescopes being constructed at ESO and other observatories around the world, which will be able to observe very distant galaxies in the process of formation. Distinguished visitors included Alvio Renzini (ESO), Govind Swarup (TIFR) and Ofer Lahav (IoAC). The meeting was very successful in bringing together a diverse range of observers to discuss areas of collaboration; of note was an impromptu lunchtime discussion (organized by Brian Boyle of the AAO) on coordinating observations of the second Hubble Deep Field.