_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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  ***                        <)                    

HALCA STATUS

HALCA's "eclipses" come in two distinct seasons: a period of about a year during which the Earth blocks the Sun's light for 30 minutes or so every orbit, and a period of about a month during which eclipses last up to 90 minutes. No observing is carried out during these eclipses, or for a similar period after each eclipse while HALCA's batteries recharge. HALCA recently ended a season of the shorter eclipses, and will be basking in direct sunlight 24 hours a day for the next two-and-a-bit months.

AP-RASC

An Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference (AP-RASC) was held in Tokyo earlier this month. This was the first Asia-Pacific regional URSI conference to be held between URSI General Assemblies. Commission J (Radio Astronomy) sessions covered VLBI projects, millimeter and sub-mm facilities, collaboration and development in the Asia-Pacific region, low frequency telescopes and/or dense arrays, and future plans (including VSOP-2). Prof. G. Swarup (TIFR) gave one of the two General Lectures at the Conference, with the title "Challenges at the Frontiers of Science and Engineering in Radio Astronomy". The Conference was very well attended and VSOP and VSOP-2 activities were well represented in the oral and poster sessions. The next AP-RASC will be held in China in 2004.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Lister, Tingay and Preston have followed up the paper of Tingay et al. describing VSOP observations of sources from the Pearson-Readhead sample (see VSOP news 129) with a multi-dimensional correlation analysis on the observed properties of the sample from the VSOP observations and previously published studies. In addition to confirming many previously known correlations, several new trends that lend additional support to the beaming model have been discovered. These trends suggest that the most highly beamed sources in core-selected samples tend to have high optical polarizations; large pc/kpc-scale jet misalignments; prominent VLBI core components; narrow emission line equivalent widths; and a strong tendency for intraday variability at radio wavelengths. The paper has been accepted for publication in ApJ, and can be found at astro-ph/0102276.

FIRST JAPAN-KOREAN VLBI

Fringes were found recently at the Mitaka correlator from a single-baseline 86 GHz experiment between the Nobeyama 45 m radio-telescope in Japan and the Taeduk 14 m telescope in South Korea, a baseline of 1012 km. These are the first fringes on this baseline, and indeed are the first VLBI fringes to Taeduk. Several continuum sources were observed, with only one detected, but fringes were found for 86 GHz SiO maser emission from Orion KL and VY CMa. These results are a promising start for prospective future collaboration between the planned Korean VLBI Network (KVN) and the Japanese VERA array.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi