Some Thoughts from the Outgoing Chair of the Working Group

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you as the outgoing chair of the Organizing Committee (OC) for our Working Group (WG) on Active B Stars, to summarize what I see as the main achievements and events for our WG over my 3-year term as chair, and also briefly to reiterate what I see as the key challenges for our WG.

First I wish to thank Gerrie Peters and Juan Fabregat for agreeing to take over duties as OC co-chairs, and further to thank Gerrie, who as editor of our newsletter, has offered me this opportunity to address the WG.

Sadly, my tenure as OC chair was marked by the tragic and untimely passing, in June 2005, of our valued colleague and friend John Porter. Our newsletter has collected contributions from members giving their personal memories and thoughts of John, to be found in the Be Star Newsletter, No. 38, p. 3, 2007, and at
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~dam3ma/benews/volume38/wkgp/jp1.html .

John had originally been scheduled to give talks at the conference on "Stars with the B[e] Phenomenon" held July 2005 in Vlieland, The Netherlands, and at the conference on "Active OB Stars: Laboratories for Stellar and Circumstellar Physics", held August 2005 in Sapporo, Japan. The proceedings volumes of both meetings have been dedicated to his memory.

These two meetings were indeed important events in our field during the past few years. The Vlieland B[e]-star meeting was organized by Michaela Kraus and co-workers, largely independent of any formal participation of our WG-OC, though I joined many others from our WG who were in attendance. The resulting proceedings were edited by M. Kraus and A. Miroshnichenko, and have now appeared as volume 355 of the ASP conference series.

The Sapporo meeting was more a direct product of discussions within our OC, which in fall 2004 submitted a proposal for IAU sponsorship as a colloquium. Fortunately, when that initial effort was not successful, Atsuo Okazaki was able to arrange a quite impressive level of sponsorship from several Japanese organizations, with the result that it was possible to hold a very well-organized, well-attended, and lively meeting, and also to provide partial local and/or travel support for many students and post-doctoral level researchers. The resulting proceedings were edited by S. Stefl, S. Owocki, and A. Okazaki, and will appear by end of March 2007 as volume 361 of the ASP conference series.

As for the future, I do still believe that, as stated in my incoming chair message, a key longtime challenge for our WG is to increase our contact and overlap with other research areas, particularly for closely aligned topics like pulsating stars and general massive stars. Indeed, throughout my recent terms on our OC for the WG on Active B Stars, I have also been on the OC for the WG on Massive Stars. Recently, in fact, when none of the others asked were able to take over from Claus Leiterer as chair that OC, I agreed to do so. In that new capacity, I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with the incoming chairs of the Active B Star OC to find ways to bring these two WG's closer together, including joint sponsorship of meetings on subjects of common interest, perhaps, e.g., on the role of rapid rotation in the evolution and mass loss of massive stars.

In closing, I wish you all the best in your continuing efforts to understand the physical nature and broad astrophysical relevance of the fascinating collection of objects we know as Active B Stars.

Regards,
Stan Owocki
Outgoing Chair
Organizing Committee of the IAU Working Group on Active B Stars