Foreword

The present form of the report of the activities of the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences does not differ significantly from the last year's report. Its structure and layout are, however, considerably different from those of the corresponding Slovak version (also available at our web page).

Here, we focus almost uniquely on the scientific activities of the Institute and omit a number of important "non-scientific" issues, like, e.g., financial matters of the institute, teaching commitments at universities, etc.; these can only be found in the Slovak version.

Looking back at the year 2003 let me just briefly summarize major accomplishments. The amount of scientific production is expressed by 52 papers in internationally distinguished refereed journals and 43 articles in conference proceedings. A number of interesting results have been obtained, some of them being highlighted in what follows. Our institute plays a very important role in 12 well-established international projects and a number of informal collaborations.

The institute hosted and co-sponsored the International Solar Cycle Study Symposium "Solar Variability as an Input to the Earth's Environment" which was held on June 23-28, 2003 at the Institute and adjacent hotels' area. There were 27 invited reviews, 34 contributed oral presentations and 114 posters. The conference was a very successful professional forum for 146 participants from 34 countries worldwide. Proceedings of the Symposium was published by the European Space Agency.

We have also succeeded in substantially improving our observational facilities. A new power internet server was put into operation and the dome of the 61-cm comet and asteroid reflector at the Skalnate Pleso Observatory was rebuilt for automatical regime. A complex reconstruction of the central heating at the mountain Skalnate Pleso Observatory and new central heating at the Stara Lesna Headquarters substantially improved working conditions for our observers and scientists. We have also upgraded a few computers and modernized the internal net at the Bratislava's branch of the Institute.

Yet, there were also a number of problems we had to face. The main, and most pressing one, is our meagre budget for purchase of new literature. A majority of journals we keep receiving thanks to an exchange policy for current issues of our journal Contributions of the Astronomical Observatory Skalnate Pleso (CAOSP). The last volume of the CAOSP (number 33) appeared in three regular issues. The journal is covered by the ISI and is electronically available from our web page (http://www.astro.sk) and the ADS database as well.
 
 
 
Ján Svoren
director of AI SAS



Jan Rybak 2004-06-11