Author Description

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop "Astrophotography 87," which was held in Jena, April 21-24, 1987. The workshop was organized by the Central Institute of Astrophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic and is the latest in a series devoted to the problems of photography in astronomy. The previous workshops, which have taken place every three years, were held in Edinburgh (1984), Nice (1981) and Geneva (1978). For telescopes with large fields of view, in particular Schmidt telescopes, photographic plates are the only suitable radiation receiver. Thus the effi ciency of the photographic plate determines the quality of the observation. The treatment of the plates in the photographic laboratory is also very im portant. Additional factors affecting the scientific results are the measuring machines and the methods of interpretation. All these topics were discussed in the workshop by the 62 participants (26 from the GDR and 36 from 13 other countries. Thanks go to David Malin, the chairman of the working group "Astropho tography" of the International Astronomical Union, for writing an introduc tory article for the proceedings. I am grateful to all participants who pre sented papers during the workshop for sending in their manuscripts on time. Poster papers are arranged among the other papers according to the topics they treat. All participants also wish to express their thanks to Springer Verlag for publishing the proceedings."