Astronomical Time Series

ELlA M. LEIBOWITZ Director, Wise Observatory Chair, Scientific Organizing Committee The international symposium on "Astronomical Time Series" was held at the Tel Aviv University campus in Tel Aviv, from December 30 1996 to January 11997. It was organized in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Florence and George Wise Observatory (WO) operated by Tel Aviv University. The site of the 1 meter telescope of the observatory is near the town of Mitzpe-Ramon, some 220 km south of Tel Aviv, at the center of the Israeli Negev highland. There were two major reasons for the choice of Time Series as the sub ject matter for our symposium. One is mainly concerned with the subject matter itself, and one is related particularly to the Wise Observatory. There is hardly any doubt that astronomical time series are among the most ancient concepts in human civilization and culture. One can even say that astronomical time series preceeded astronomy itself, as the impression of the day /night cycle on Earth is probably the first and most fundamental effect that impress a. human being, or, in fact, most living creatures on this planet. An echo of this idea. can be heard in the Biblical story of Creation, where the concept of night and day preceeds the creation of the astronomical objects.

Inhalt
I. Invited Papers.- Astronomical Time Series Analysis: New Methods for Studying Periodic and Aperiodic Systems.- Time Series Analysis from a Statistical Viewpoint.- Observations of Millisecond Pulsars on Time Scales from 10 Nanoseconds to 10 Years.- Microlensing: Current Results and Future Prospects.- Image Subtraction in Time Series Analysis: Application to Microlensing and Light Echoes.- Desperately Seeking Non-Gaussianity: The Light Curve of 0957+561.- The Q0957+561 Time Delay, Quasar Structure, and Microlensing.- Reverberation Mapping and the Physics of Active Galactic Nuclei.- Echo Mapping of X-ray Binaries and Active Galactic Nuclei.- Kilohertz Quasi-Periodic Oscillations in Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries.- Radial Velocity Detections of Extra-Solar Planets.- Time and Quantum Measurement.- Concluding Remarks.- II. Contributed Papers.- Is AGN Variability Correlated with Other AGN Properties? ZDCF Analysis of Small Samples of Sparse Light Curves.- Tests of Irregularly Sampled Stochastic Time Series for AGN.- Measuring Variability in the Presence of Noise.- Wavelet Transforms of Flickering Light Curves in Cataclysmic Variables.- Fast Computation of Trigonometric Sums with Applications to the Frequency Analysis of Astronomical Data.- Period Search: Comparison of the New and Old Methods.- Analyzing the X-Ray Variability of Cygnus X-1.- Far Ultraviolet Rapid HST Photometry of U Gem in Outburst and WZ Sge in Quiescence.- The New Ultrashort-Period Cataclysmic Variable: RX J0757.0+6306.- Permanent Superhumps in Nova V1974 Cyg 1992.- Nova V1974 Cygni 1992: Variability of the Spectra in the Nebular Phase.- On the Short-Time Scale Evolutionary History of Contact Binary VW Cephei.- Statistics of Cataclysmic Variables from the Highly Evolved Close Binary Systems Catalog.- NovaAquilae 1995 A Photometric Resemblance to Intermediate Polars.- The Analysis of Three Novae: Old Novae Q Cyg, DI Lac, and N Cyg 1992 = V1974 Cyg.- What is the Magnetic Field of the DQ Herculis Binaries?.- Application of Frequency Analysis in Searches for Planets around Pulsars.- The Planetary Companions to PSR B1257+12.- Period Variations in Six Galactic Cepheids.- Optical-to-Radio Time Delay in the Gravitationally Lensed QSO 0957+561.- Reverberation Mapping of High Luminosity AGN.- Reverberation Modeling of the Broad Emission Line Region in NGC 5548.- Principal Component Analysis of the C IV ?1549 Emission Line in Active Galactic Nuclei.- X-ray Variability and Spectral Scaling: A measure of BLR sizes in AGN.- Variable High Energy Emission of Blazars.- Analyzing X-ray Variability by State Space Models.- OJ 287: Wavelet Analysis of the 3-year light curve.- Timescales of Optical Continuum Variability in NGC 4151.- The X-ray Variability Properties of PG Quasars: New ROSAT/HRI Results.- Auto- and Cross-Correlations of Gamma Ray Burst Time Series.- TAUVEX and its Contribution to Time Series Studies.- Author Index.