COMMISSION 42: CLOSE BINARIES

Extract

The president of the Commission welcomed the participants in the business meeting and provided an overview of the activities carried out during the past triennium 2002-2005. A good number of meetings have been held during this period on close binaries, about two per year, including both classical and interacting systems. One specific Symposium at the General Assembly in Prague, devoted to binary stars as astrophysical tools, showed the vitality of the field and the trend of cooperation between scientists studying close binaries and those specialized in visual double stars. The study of very low-mass binaries, including those containing planet-sized components also received much attention as well as the analysis of massive objects in nearby galaxies.