Stellar Astrophysics, 2000 Astrophysics and Space Science Library Series, Vol. 254

The Pacific Rim Conference originally started with one research concentration only - binary star research. The first Conference was held in Beijing, China, 1985, the second one in Seoul and Taejon, South Korea, 1990 and the third one in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 1995. In recent years, the conference series evolved into a much broader area of stellar astrophysics. The first such conference was held in Hong Kong in 1997. Kwong-Sang Cheng, a. k. a. one of the three Musketeers, documented the "accidental" development in writing in the Proceedings of the 1997 Pacific Rim Conference on Stellar Astrophysics (Volume 138 of the ASP Conference Series)! The meeting at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology covered three major topics: binary stars, compact stars and solar type stars. The conference was extremely successful. There was a general feeling among the participants that the conference on stellar astrophysics provided a good means to share ideas between such closely related disciplines. Unfortunately after the very successful meeting at HKST, Kwing L. Chan (another Musketeer) thought that he had already served and would not like to chair for another LOC for at least five years! After a few drinks at one of the watering holes in Wan Chai district of Hong Kong, Kwong-Sang Cheng was in very hiRh spirit and volunteered to taking on the responsibility of hosting the 51 Pacific Rim Conference at Hong Kong University in 1999.

Section I - Stellar (Solar) Evolution and Observational Constrains.- The dynamo effect in stars.- Differential rotation, meridional flow and a high-prandtl number solar/stellar dynamo.- Generation of the angular velocity shear near the solar surface.- 2D numerical simulation of stellar convection---An overview.- The atmospheric dynamics in 2D and 3D simulations of stellar surface convection.- Rotating turbulent compressible convection in a shell.- Nuclear Astrophysics with radioactive beams.- Section II - Physics of Compact Stars and Pulsars.- Pulsars at Parkes.- Spark model for drifting subpulses in pulsars.- The observation of pulsars at Urumqi Astronomical Observatory.- Thermal X-ray pulses resulting from pulsar glitches.- Starquake-induced glitches in pulsars.- Thermal evolution of neutron stars.- Probing the neutron star interior with glitches.- Physics of neutron star kicks.- Collapsing strange quark matter in Vaidya geometry-a possible source of gamma ray bursts.- Conversion of neutron stars into strange stars.- Do strange stars exist in the universe?.- Oscillations of quark stars.- A new indicator for the spectral states and state transitions in Cygnus 1.- Section III - Binary Stars I: Observation Technique and Modeling.- Does rotation alone determine whether an A-type star’s spectrum is abnormal or normal?.- The distribution of separations of binaries.- Coronal activity of near-contact binaries.- ISO-sws studies of Wolf-Rayet stars: Neon abundances.- Short time scale variation of a near-contact binary system, GR Tauri.- General relativistic hydrodynamic equation in multiple system.- Session IV ¡ª Binary Star with Accretion Disk.- Explanationof the O’Connell effect of a close binary.- Effects of the Blandford-Znajek process on evolution of radial structureof black hole accretion disks.- Theory of accretion disks and applications in Astrophysics.- A cellular automaton model for the power law noise of an accretion disc.- X-ray spectral variations of X-ray nova XTE J1550-564 during the rising phase of the 1998 outburst.- A new parameter in accretion disk model.- Photometric Project for Zero-age Contact and Near Contact Binary Systems.- Balmer decrement and the structure of Be-star envelopes.- Symbiotic stars with highly resolved emission line profiles.- Session V - High Energy Phenomena I: Observations.- Long-term X-ray variability in X-ray binaries: RXTE/ASM and BATSE data.- X-rays from millisecond pulsars.- Long-term variability properties and periodicity analysis for blazars.- Session VI - High Energy Phenomena II: Theories.- The optical, X-ray and gamma-ray light curves and spectra of PSRB0540-69 and PSR B 1509-58.- Analytical studies on the structure and emission of the SS 433 jets.- Magnetically driven warping, precession and resonances in accretion disks.- What do gamma-ray bursts look like?.- Energy and radiation mechanisms of gamma-ray bursts.- On the inverse Compton scattering model of radio pulsars.- The effect of ICS on GRB afterglows.- A possible mechanism for the metallicity of the first generation star.- Poster Session.- The influence of the stellar mass ratio on spiral shocks in accretion disks around compact objects.- Rotating neutron stars for a new microscopic equation of state.- The radial, vertical and azimuthal instability of an isothermal disc with three-dimensional magnetic field.- Orbital period of the low-inclination SW Sextantis star V442 Ophiuchi.- A new mass function of a symbiotic star, HBV475.- New cataclysmic variables from RASS.- Oxygen abundance evolution in the solar neighborhood.- Threevery metal-poor, extremely wide binaries.- Lithium in G dwarfs.- Optical observations of the X-ray transients X1658-298 and X1608-522.- Study of reddening in the young open cluster NGC 6913.- Luminosity of type IA supernovae and Hubble constant.- The explanation for the strange shape of mean pulse of pulsar PSR J2019+2425.- An explanation of the change in the orbital period of the contact binary V781 Tauri.- The circumstellar envelope of the POST-AGB star.- The Statistics of X-ray Emission from Galactic Young Pulsars.- A Poly-component Model for Galactic Halo.- Author Index.