Observational Manifestation of Chaos in Astrophysical Objects, 2002 Invited talks for a workshop held in Moscow, Sternberg Astronomical Institute, 28-29 August 2000

On August 2000 in the Lomonosov Moscow State University the first scientific conference dedicated to chaos in the real astronomical systems was held. The most prominent astrophysisists - specialist in the field of stochastic dynamics - attended the conference. A broad scope of the problems related to the observed manifes­ tations of chaotic motions in galactic and stellar objects, with the involvement of basic theory and numerical modeling, were addressed. The idea (not so obvious, as we believe, to many astrophysicists) was to show that, while great progress in the field of stochastic mechanics was accomplished, the science of chaos in actually observed systems is only just being born. Basically, the situation described prompted the organizers to hold the meeting in order to discuss chaotic processes in real systems. It seemed worthwhile to begin these introductory remarks with a brief descrip­ tion of some events that preceeded the conference. Since actually existing systems are the subject of the natural sciences, and in the latter experiments play the key role, we shall begin our account with the experimental results.

Stochastic Appearance in Stars and High Energy Sources; G.S. Bisnovatyi-Kogan. Observational Manifestations of Precession of Accretion Disk in the SS 433 Binary System; A. Cherepashchuk. Orbits and Integrals in Self-consistent Systems; G. Contopoulos, N. Voglis, C. Efthymiopoulos. Observational Manifestations of Chaos in the Gaseous Disk at the Grand Design Spiral Galaxy NGC 3631; A.M. Fridman, O.V. Khoruzhii, E.V. Polyachenko. Observing Chaos in External Spiral Galaxies; P. Grosbøl. Spectral Analysis of Orbits via Discrete Fourier Transforms; C. Hunter. Should Elliptical Galaxies be Idealised as Collisionless Equilibria? H.E. Kandrup. How Important are the Equations of Motion in a Chaotic System? R.H. Miller. Resonantly Excited Non-linear Density Waves in Disk Systems; Chi Yuan.