The Circulars of the International Astronomical Union (hereafter called IAUCs) are copyrighted. It is not allowed to distribute them freely. For the extracts of some of the IAUCs you can find on these Chiron pages, special permission was asked and obtained from Dr. Brian G. Marsden. This is the policy to follow: when you feel the need to distribute IAUCs (or parts of them) by any (electronical) way, contact Dr. Marsden (marsden@cfa.harvard.edu) or Dr. Green (green@cfa.harvard.edu) and ask for a special permission. DO NOT proceed with the distribution unless you have Dr. Marsden's permission.
The situation is simple. Dr. Marsden's assistants, Daniel Green and Gareth Williams, are paid from the subscription income. Yes these two eminent workers (and their families) are dependent on the subscription income from the IAUCs and Minor Planet Circulars (MPCs). Thus: no subscriptions, no IAUCs nor MPCs.
And also, if everyone who is reading and using the IAUCs or MPCs through a way that 'bypasses' the copyright, would pay, then the subscription rates could be lowered! Consequently, less people would violate the copyright, and subscribe. By doing so, the subscription rates could be lowered even more, etc...
To just mention one of the possibilities, I quote Dr. Marsden from one of his e-mails to me.
"Anybody who has an e-mail/Computer Service subscription has the possibility of extracting electronic versions of the IAUCs back to October 1982 (No. 3726). Our service also has a complete CROSS- REFERENCED index all the way back to October 1922 (No. 1). The subscription rate is only $6.00 per month (if no invoice is required) or $10.00 per month (if an invoice is required). Since this subscription rate gives all the current IAUCs and MPECs, as well as a number of other services (lists of novae and supernovae, orbits and ephemeris computations for specific objects, possibility of identifying observed comets and minor planets, etc.) we think it provides very good value."
(e-mail message of 1995 March 3, from B. Marsden to P. Vanouplines)
More information can be obtained from the WWW pages of the CBAT (Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams).
Yes, and Dr. Marsden knows it! But he is not entirely happy about it.
What is going on? IAUCs older than three months are freely available. They can be obtained through anonymous FTP, and even be searched with WAIS. No, I do not give a hyperlink here (since I am thinking about Green's and Williams' salaries ...). On the other hand, older IAUCs ARE on the Internet, so I added them in one of the other pages (search for it yourself).
I once found a site offering more recent IAUCs. I informed Dr. Marsden. Access to the violating directory was almost immediately cut off. Let me suggest that you do the same in the case of other violations: just tell Marsden.
URL of this page is: [http://www.vub.ac.be/STER/www.astro/iauccopy.htm]
Last modified: 1995 October 03. This page is ©1995.