These questions will be discussed by the world's foremost astronomers at a major international meeting to be held at the Academy of Science's Becker House during 17-21 August 1998.

The theme of the conference is: The Galactic Halo: Bright Stars and Dark Matter. It is being organized by the ANU's Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories as the third in its international series of Stromlo Symposia. Over 60 of the world's leading astronomers will attend, and be joined by Australian researchers working on the astrophysics of our Galaxy's Halo.

The Halo, first recognised in the 1940s, is a giant football-shaped region surrounding the inner, denser part of our Milky Way. It contains some of the oldest stars in the Universe; so it can tell us much about the origin of things. It also contains a vast mass of invisible matter yet to be identified completely. The Halo has been a key research interest at Mount Stromlo for the last few decades.

The Third Stromlo Symposium is being dedicated as a memorial to Professor Alex Rodgers, the sixth Director of Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, who died in Canberra last October. Professor Rodgers was one of the leading proponents of the famous MACHO experiment. This decade-long project is monitoring several million stars, using the Great Melbourne Telescope at Mount Stromlo, to look for 'gravitational lensing' events caused by unseen objects in the Halo. These MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects) could be responsible for much of the unseen missing mass in our Galaxy. The experiment has been outstandingly successful, and MACHO team members will be reporting progress at the Symposium.

The week's activities will include a talk in the ANU Public Lecture Series on the evening of Wednesday 19 August by Dr Charles Alcock of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He will speak on The MACHO Project - Finding Dark Matter in the Milky Way. The lecture will be held at 8.00 pm in the Australian National University's Manning Clark Lecture Theatre 3.

Media Contacts:

Before 17 August 1998:

Professor John Norris	Dr. Don Faulkner	Mrs. Fiona Aplin
Ph: (02) 6279 8034	Ph: (02) 6249 0258	Ph: (02) 6249 0266
Fax: (02) 6249 0233	Fax: (02) 6249 0233	Fax: (02) 6249 0260
jen@mso.anu.edu.au	djf@mso.anu.edu.au	director@mso.anu.edu.au

During the Conference (17-21 August 1998):

Becker House			Ph: 014 685 255 (Fiona Aplin)
Australian Academy of Science			Fax: (02) 6247 5373 (attention: Don Faulkner)
Gordon Street
Canberra City ACT 2601

Third Stromlo Symposium web site: http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~tss.

18 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: Galaxy's 'Dark Matter' Mystery May Be Solved

18 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: Old Stars Hold Chemical Clues to Early Universe

19 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: Astro Sleuths Fail to Find Missing Dwarfs

19 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: Dark Matter in the Universe - How will it End?

20 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: "Builders' Rubble" may be Key to Galaxy Formation

20 August 1998, 01:00 EAST: Galactic Archaeology: Is the Milky Way a Cannibal?

We would like to thank our sponsors:

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