Investigating the Universe: Papers presented to Zdeněk Kopal on the occasion of his retirement, September 1981

Professor Zdenek Kopal is sixty-seven this year even though his scientific activity, enthusiasm and springy step hardly betray the ad vancement in years. He carne to Manchester as Professor of Astronomy thirty years ago after a very fruitful association of fourteen years with the Harvard Observatory. Much impressed with the young man, Harlow Shapley, who with characteristic insight had recognised in Kopal the qualities that have since made him an outstanding leader in ec1ipsing binary research, had invited him over as a Research Associate. In the subsequent decade Kopal set about the task of introducing analytical rigour in the solution of orbit al elements that hitherto had depended ex c1usively on the semigraphical procedures introduced by Russell and exploited fully by Shapley. These first efforts stimulated publication of the first of his many books on ec1ipsing variables; the Introductian ta the Study of Ec/ipsing Variables summarized these iterative methods and remains a c1assic in this field. Soon after the appearance of this volume in print, Kopal gave a course on this subject for the graduate students at Harvard. I was one of those who had the opportunity to attend it and learn much on the need of care and precision in the practice of photoelectric photometry and the importance of exploiting such data to the fullest extent with methods of increasing resolving power Front Matter....Pages i-x Dynamics of the Galactic Fountain....Pages 1-28 Optical Observations of Interstellar Shockwaves....Pages 29-59 The Young Phenomena within the Large Magellanic Cloud....Pages 61-94 Herbig-Haro Objects: Recent Observational and Theoretical Developments....Pages 95-124 The Dynamical Effects of Hypersonic Stellar Winds on Interstellar Gas....Pages 125-150 The Discovery and Observed Properties of QSOs at Large Redshifts — An Update....Pages 151-206 The Algol-Type Systems....Pages 207-225 An Analytical Approach to Contact Binary Stability....Pages 227-240 The Roche Dimensions of Rotating Gaseous Disks in Close Binary Systems....Pages 241-270 Close Binary Systems of Short Period....Pages 271-319 Bifurcations of Planar to Three-Dimensional Periodic Orbits in the Restricted Three-Body Problem....Pages 321-351 The Role of Electrostatic Charging of Small and Intermediate Sized Bodies in the Solar System....Pages 353-384 Interacting Galaxies....Pages 385-422 Techniques for Simulating Galactic Collisions....Pages 423-441 Back Matter....Pages 443-462