Proceedings of the 20th Meeting of the European VLBI Group for Geodesy and Astronomy

Abstract

On March 29 and 30, 2011, the European VLBI Group for Geodesy and Astronomy (EVGA) held its 20th meeting on the invitation of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany. Starting 31 years ago on the initiative of Prof. James Campbell this series of conferences can look back to an impressive record. Today, EVGA has firmly settled for a two-year sequence of its meetings. Starting in Bonn in 1980 the venue has come back to its initial location at 2011 again, though at a different institute. In the meantime, many different groups have hosted the meetings at various places in Europe as can be read from the table to the right. As with the other 19 meetings before, the occasion was dedicated to the presentations of the current status and of recent results in the form of oral and poster presentations. With 80 participants from Europe as well as from overseas, the meeting was one of the biggest clearly indicating that geodetic and astrometric VLBI in Europe is an important cornerstone of worldwide VLBI research. The number of contributions has increased to an impressive 41 talks and 13 posters with many exciting new results and ideas. We are grateful to all authors who have submitted their manuscripts for publication in these proceedings and hope that many more readers will draw interesting information from the papers.