From: Haruyuki Okuda [okda@agate.plala.or.jp]
Sent: 18 December 2004 03:23
To: al@roe.ac.uk
Cc: masatoshi.ohishi@nao.ac.jp
Subject: IAU symposium

Dear Prof. Andy Lawrence,

     From Dr. Masatoshi Ohishi, one of the SOC members, I have recently 
known that you were asking me to send a supporting letter to your proposal 
for the IAU symposium "The Virtual Observatory in Action: New Science, New 
Technology and Next Generation Facilities".  I have checked my mailing list 
in the past, but I could not find your mail. I do not know why.

     Any way, I have read your proposal sent to Dr. Ohishi,  and find it 
very interesting proposal.  In every field of astronomy, observational data 
are flooded  by the rapid developments of observational technique. 
Tremendous amount of data have been continuously produced from various 
facilities in ground based observatories as well as from space borne 
telescopes. Now, full use of these data sets is impossible without powerful 
coordination among the different fields and introduction of new 
infrastructure.  I think the idea of Virtual Observatory should be the best 
solution. In this respect, your proposal is very valuable to advance the 
idea and organize world wide collaboration.  Since many space missions are 
in operations, and many others are in preparations, it is quite timely to 
have such a symposium also for our community of Space and High Energy 
Astrophysics. As the president of Division XI, I am pleased to support the 
proposal for the IAU symposium "The Virtual Obervatory in Action: New 
Science, New Technology and New Generation Facilities"to be held at Prague 
in 2006.

      Sincerely yours,


      Haruyuki Okuda
      President of Division XI, Space and High Energy Astrophysics