_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      V   V   SSSS   OOO   PPPP                 \__      |_|      __/         
      V   V  S      O   O  P   P                   --____/ \____--            
      V   V   SSS   O   O  PPPP                    _ _ _ --- _ _ _            
       V V       S  O   O  P                      |_|_|_|  @|_|_|_|           
        V    SSSS    OOO   P                             o-o                  
                                                          /                   
      ***  N    E    W    S  ***                        <)                    

THE THIRD VSOP ANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY

The Third VSOP Announcement of Opportunity and associated documentation is available from the VSOP website. The proposal deadline is October 1, 1999.

The list of observed and scheduled AO1 and AO2 observations was finally added to the AO page on the website today. Proposers are urged to check whether their as-yet-unobserved AO1 and AO2 observations have been scheduled for later this year or early next year. If they have been scheduled, there is no need to submit an AO3 proposal for that observation.

AO3 proposals are particularly encouraged for sources in those regions of sky allowing good (u,v) coverage during the first half of next year: all-sky (u,v) coverage plots are available from the AO page on the VSOP website.

The important changes between AO3 and preceding AO's are summarized in section 1.1 of the AO (and reproduced as a separate page on the website). As with previous AO's, the cover sheets must be submitted as the completed latex template (*not* a postscript file) as information related to the proposal is extracted from this file. From AO3 however, the justification *may* be submitted by e-mail (separate from the cover sheets) as a postscript document -- see section 4.3 of the AO for more details. Proposers wishing to use this option are recommended to submit proposals a day or two before the deadline so that any problems that arise in printing the cover sheets at ISAS can be resolved. Proposers wishing to submit their proposals by surface mail or courier are reminded it is their responsibility to make sure that the proposal arrives at ISAS before the deadline. Any questions by proposers can be e-mailed to the VSOP help desk (vsop_help@vsop.isas.ac.jp).

VSOP SYMPOSIUM

People planning to attend the VSOP Symposium are reminded the deadline for Abstract submission is Friday, October 15th. The latex template for the abstracts was included in the second announcement and is available from the VSOP website. One slight change has been made to the information in the second announcement: it was stated the third announcement would be distributed on October 1st, however, the release date has been delayed until October 8th as Local Organizing Committee members will have other things on their mind leading up to October 1st!

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SPACE SCIENCE

VSOP Project Scientist, Prof. "Hirax" Hirabayashi is giving a lecture on VLBI in Space next week at the International School of Space Science in L'Aquila, Italy. The theme for the course is High Resolution Observations in Astronomy, and further details are available from http://www.cifs-isss.org/ .

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi