I. Tribute to the Memory of Professor M. K. V. Bappu

Abstract

The meeting brought together the majority of General Assembly participants and was a sad farewell to a highly respected and admired scientist, a brilliant organisor and a beloved friend. The texts of the speeches, which were also printed in the General Assembly Newspaper, "Astrocosmos", on 24 August, are reproduced below. PROFESSOR E.K. KHARADZE-ON BEHALF OF THE IAU Dear Colleagues, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen, On behalf of the International Astronomical Union I express the most profound sorrow caused by the most untimely death of the current President of our Union, the distinguished scientist Professor Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu, 55 years of age. We have all gathered here today at this mournful moment to pay a worthy tribute to his memory. During Professor Bappu's triennial Presidency of our Union, we have witnessed his devotion to the interests of the Union, his very fruitful activity aimed at its consolidation and strengthening of its scientific effectiveness for the further development of our science-astronomy, all over the planet. The members of our Union will also remember Professor Bappu's contribution at the earlier time of his office in the Union as Vice-President in 1967-1973. Professor Bappu's prominent activity in the Union and in the worldwide astronomical community in general carries the features not only of the skill of an experienced eminent scientist, but also of personal tact, kindness and benevolence to everybody, that has always been so highly appreciated by his colleagues and that has made collaboration with him so pleasant and easy.

Polarimetry of comets: A review

“…This relation has been confirmed by numerous observations of molecular bands and atomic lines in many other comets (Blackwell and Willstrop, 1957;Bappu and Sinvhal, 1960;Hyder, 1966;Bappu et al, 1967) up to CI = 40". The polarization plane remains orthogonal to the scattering plane and the P,, for molecular bands is near 0.09.…”

“…Observations of Comets Arend-Roland 1957 III, Mrkos 1957 V (Bappu and Sinvhal, 1960) Ikeya-Seki 1965 VIII (Bappu et al, 1967), Tago-Sato-Kosaka 1969 IX (Wolf, 1972), Bennett 1970 II (Bugaenko et al, 1973;Kharitonov and Rebristyi, 1973), Kohoutek 1973 XII (Bugaenko et al, 1974;Noguchi et al, 1974), West 1976 VI (Kiselev andChernova, 1978), showed that, in the visual domain, the polarization increases with increasing wavelength. The polarization in IR has the same order of magnitude as in the visible light (Noguchi et al, 1974;Oishi et al, 1978a).…”

Absolute spectrophotometry of Comet kohoutek 1973f during post-perihelion passage

“…The soidum emission was very well seen in Comet Kohoutek. Sodium emission was strong in the pre-perihelion spectra but weak in the post-perihelion ones (Bappu et al, 1974 andA'Hearn, 1975). A'Hearn (1975) and Kohoutek and Rahe (1975) reported that the sodium D-lines were strong in early January but 'almost vanished' on 12 January, 1974.…”

“…In previous studies, some comets were known to have a pure reflection continuum (Gebel, 1970;Ney, 1974;Ney and Merrill, 1976;and Goraya et&, 1982); whereas some comets were found to produce continuum matching with those of the late-type stars around G8 (Bappu and Sinvhal, 1960;Vanysek, 1960;Babu, 1974b;and Kharitonov and Rebristyi, 1974). However, several spectrophotometric studies indicate that the continuum is considerably reddened with respect to the Sun (Liller, 1960;Johnson et al, 1971;Babu and Saxena, 1972;Stokes, 1972;Vanysek, 1974, Bappu et al, 1980and Goraya et al, 1984). The continuum was probably due to the scattering of sunlight by solid particles in the comae of those comets.…”

“…The most interesting feature to be noted from cometary energy distribution curves in Figure 6 is that they show an increase in reddening with increasing heliocentric distance and decreasing phase angle. Many comets are known to show this type of behaviour (Babu and Saxena, 1972;Vanqsek, 1974;Sivaraman et al, 1979;and Bappu et al, 1980). Babu (1974b) has measured the energy distribution of Comet Kohoutek during preperihelion period and has found a decrease in reddening of the continuum with increase in phase angle.…”