The Baltic Meetings 1957 to 1967

TL;DR

This paper reviews the history of the Baltic astronomical meetings from 1957 to 1967, highlighting their focus on astrometry and their influence on the development of space-based astrometric missions like Hipparcos.

Contribution

It provides a historical overview of the Baltic meetings, emphasizing their role in advancing astrometry and the early scientific communication among Northern European astronomers.

Findings

Meetings gathered up to 70 astronomers from Northern Germany and Scandinavia.

A significant focus on astrometry influenced the development of space astrometry.

Archival correspondence from the 1950s is stored in Copenhagen.

Abstract

The Baltic meetings of astronomers from Northern Germany and Scandinavia began in 1957 and gathered up to 70 participants. Reports of the presentations are available from all meetings, providing an overview of the interests of astronomers in this part of the world 50 years ago. Most interesting to see for a young astronomer in our days, I think, is that a large part of the time was about astrometry. This focus on astrometry was the basis for the scientific knowhow which made the idea of space astrometry realistic, resulting in the approval by ESA of the first astrometry satellite Hipparcos in 1980 which brought a revolution of high-precision astrometry of positions, motions and distances of stars. The correspondence with ten observatories shows that only one of them has any archive of letters at all from the 1950s, that is in Copenhagen where about 7000 letters on scientific and administrative matters are extant. - These letters have now been stored in the Rigsarkivet.