• Texaco, Inc. and BP America both use the image processing program IDL for analysis of drilling core samples and other aspects of petroleum research.

• SAIC (San Diego) has built solar radiation collectors up to 16 meters in diameter using graphite composite materials first developed in design studies for a proposed orbiting telescope called the LDR (Large Deployable Array).

• Grazing incidence X-ray optics was reduced to practice for solar astronomy and now finds application in plasma diagnostics for magnetically confined plasma fusion. Detailed knowledge of atomic spectra at high temperatures, gained from study of the solar corona, is also important in this context.

• Plasma and magneto-hydrodynamic phenomena, including magnetic reconnection and radiation-driven thermal instabilities, were first explored in solar and space physics environments. They also occur in fusion plasmas (and are deleterious there).

Remote sensing from orbiting satellites is now the method of choice for keeping track of an enormous range of ecologically important factors-the extent of the Arctic ice pack; the moisture content of soil in the Sahel; upper atmosphere profiles of temperature, density, and trace constituents; sea surface temperatures; and many others. Astronomically-derived image processing algorithms are widely used in these applications. Several of these are mentioned elsewhere. Another with many remote sensing and oceanographic uses is a digital correlation technique for spectral analysis of broadband signals which came out of radio astronomy (Weinreb 1963; Cooper 1976)

Specific radio, microwave, and infrared spectroscopic methods from astronomy have also proven useful in environmental applications from space and ground. Downward looking millimeter wave sounding traces back to work on the atmospheres of Venus and Mars and was validated for the earth by radio astronomers using balloon borne telescopes. The technique is operational on the current Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and will be the primary temperature sensor on the next generation of NOAA satellites in the 1990s.

Millimeter wave technology in space (e.g., Staelin 1981) is sensitive to composition as well as temperature of the atmosphere, including greenhouse gases in low concentrations. Microwave sounders, scheduled for the ATLAS series of spacelab experiments and for the Earth Observation Satellites, were developed by a consortium of American and European radio astronomers and atmospheric scientists.

A particularly timely application of microwave astronomy techniques from the ground is study of chlorine chemistry (relevant to ozone depletion) in the Antarctic. In September 1986, instruments developed by radio astronomers at SUNY, Stony Brook found a hundred times the normal concentration of chlorine oxide at an altitude of 15-20 km in the Antarctic ozone hole. The excess disappeared in October, verifying the role of manmade chlorine compounds in ozone depletion. The detailed chemistry had earlier been tested by the group's measurements of the diurnal variation of chlorine oxide in the middle stratosphere above Mauna Kea. The Antarctic spring cycle of chlorine oxide rise and fall was followed through the 1987 season with better instrumentation yielding the full concentration profile from 16 to 40 km. Monitoring at about five sites around the world over the next 10-20 years is planned as part of the NASA-sponsored Network for the Detection of Stratospheric Change.

Many of us benefit regularly from the machinery used to X-ray luggage in airports, whose design descends from that of the earth rocket and satellite borne X-ray telescopes. Airport surveillance for drugs and explosives makes use of a particular gas chromatograph design supported by NASA for use on Mars. Some other mundane spin-offs from ground and space-based astronomy include:

• A hand-held COD photometer developed by astronomers at University of Hawaii for use by policemen checking the transparency of automobile windshields

• A non-invasive probe for contaminants likely to cause structural weakening in historic buildings; it has a neutron source and gamma-ray spectrometer, was first used to analyze lunar soil, and has been tried by astronomers at GSFC in a Colonial Williamsburg smoke house and at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice to look inside the walls behind fragile mosaics.

• Software to process two-dimensional images on a personal computer, developed by Michael Norman at the National Center for Supercomputing (Illinois) for his own astronomical purposes and modified for public consumption; about 10,000 copies have been sold.

Front Matter (R1-R12)

Radio Astronomy (1-24)

Infrared Astronomy (25-46)

Optical/IR from Ground (47-74)

UV-Optical from Space (75-106)

Interferometry (107-128)

High Energy from Space (129-152)

Particle Astrophysics (153-176)

Theory and Laboratory Astrophysics (177-198)

Solar Astronomy (199-234)

Planetary Astronomy (235-256)

Computing and Data Processing (257-282)

Policy Opportunities (283-300)

Benefits to the Nation from Astronomy and Astrophysics (301-320)

Status of the Profession (321-340)

Science Opportunities (341-342)