_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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  ***                        <)                    

MANEUVER SUCCESSFUL

HALCA's maneuver from the anti-solar direction to a sun-angle of 90 degrees was successfully carried out on July 12th, and VSOP observing has since resumed. (A minor correction to the last issue: only the reaction wheel that had its rotation direction reversed was stopped and re-started: it was not necessary to stop the other two wheels.) On July 22nd, HALCA's on-board software was upgraded in order to halve the slew rate, to 1.12 degrees per minute, to ease the load on the reaction wheels. HALCA was not adversely affected by the recent big solar flare and coronal mass ejection event, although it was noticed that the number of "noisy" pixels in the CCD cameras of the star trackers was significantly higher than usual.

IAU 205

Both a VSOP International Science Council (VISC) meeting and a VSOP-2 planning meeting will be held in Manchester during the IAU General Assembly. The VSOP-2 meeting is scheduled from 3:30pm on Monday 14th August. Interested participants are welcome, but it would be appreciated if those intending to attend the meeting could e-mail both the undersigned so that some idea of the likely attendance can be gained.

VSOP SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS

Recent visitors to the VSOP web site will have noticed that the proceedings of the VSOP Symposium are now available on-line as postscript files. Efforts are underway to also make the proceedings available as PDF files.

PASJ SPECIAL ISSUE

Over ten papers have been submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan for inclusion in the VSOP special issue later this year. These include a detailed mission overview paper, the results of the Polarization Study Team's investigations, a paper on the VSOP Survey Program, and a number of papers on individual sources. Following PASJ tradition, the accepted papers will all appear at the front of the special issue, with the remainder of the issue taken up by other (non-VSOP) papers. It is planned to make a booklet of just the VSOP papers for distribution to authors and other interested parties.

SUMO

The Nagoya sumo tournament finished last Sunday, with Hawaiian-born yokozuna (grand champion) Akebono winning with a 13-2 record. It was Akebono's first tournament victory in over three years, and takes his career record to ten victories. Akebono had the tournament wrapped up after the 13th day, but his dreams of winning without a loss evaporated with losses on the final two days.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi