The business meeting of Commission 26 was held on Friday, 7 August 2009, and consisted mainly of scientific talks. At the end, incoming President J. A. Docobo gave a video presentation with his thoughts regarding future activities of Commission 26, including the comments of members of the OC. He also announced a December 2009 workshop and discussed potential meetings in the coming years.

This report of the business meeting of Commission 15 at the 2009 IAU GA is based on notes provided by Walter Huebner, past president, and on the minutes taken by Daniel Boice, secretary of Commission 15 in the triennium 2006 to 2009, with additional notes from the current secretary, Daniel Hestroffer. The business meeting was split into two sessions, the first held on 5 August and the second held on 11 August. This report presents the minutes of the two Commission 15 business-meeting sessions held during General Assembly XXVII.

A business meeting of the IAU Commission 35 was held during the GA in Rio on Friday, August 7, 2009, with a few members of the Commission in attendance. Special care will be taken to have more members attending the BM at the next GA in Bejing in 2012. The points discussed during the BM are summarized below and are posted on the C35 website http://iau-c35.stsci.edu.

The meeting was unfortunately scheduled for the afternoon of the last day of the General Assembly, so attendance was low. Nevertheless, we had some good discussions.

Commission 46 had held two sessions of business meetings during the General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro. Both of them were chaired by Magda Stavinschi.

The Business Meeting of Commission 41 was held in Sessions 2 on 5 August 2009, with Acting President Clive Ruggles (UK) in the Chair. He called for a moment of silence for those members who had passed away in the last triennium, including Prof. Xi Zezong (b. 1927, d. 2008 Dec 27) and Prof. Chen Meidong (b. 1936, d. 2008 Dec 30).

The President verbally reported that the only scientific matter that he dealt with during the triennium as an appeal over the withholding of a supernova designation from an object observed only in the infra-red with no supporting spectrum.

Dr. George Kaplan, the current Vice-President of the Commission was nominated to be the new President. Dr. Catherine Hohenkerk was elected to be the next Vice-President of the Commission. As for the Membership of the Organizing Committee, Dr. Vondrak stepped down and Drs William Folkner of JPL and Steve Bell of HMNAO have been added. In the below, we present summaries of the reports from various institutions presented at the business session.

Division V organized a brief Business meeting during the XXVIIth General Assembly, prior to Business meetings (reported separately) of Commissions 27 and 42. The Division V Business Meeting began at 11:00 on 5 August 2009.

Brief meetings were held to confirm the elections of the incoming Division President, Francoise Genova and Vice President, Ray Norris along with the Organizing Committee which will consist of the incoming Presidents of the 7 Commissions (5,6,14,41,46,50 and 55) plus additional nominated members. The incoming Organizing Committee will thus consist of:

The business meeting of Division VIII was held on 12 August 2009 14:00-15:00 in room R2.6 together with the business meeting of Commissions 28 and 47.

Division IX provides a forum for astronomers engaged in the planning, development, construction, and calibration of optical and infrared telescopes and instrumentation, as well as observational procedures including data processing. A few years ago, discussions were started about changes in the structure of Division IX, with the aim of bringing it more in line with today's world of large coordinated projects and multi-national observatories. The course of this process, and further steps to be taken in the period from 2009 to 2012, were at the focus of the deliberations at the business meeting of Division IX at the IAU General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro.

The meeting began at 11:00 am with a brief address by outgoing president Burns highlighting the most relevant advances in Celestial Mechanics that occurred in the last 3 years.

During the Rio General Assembly we held the following meetings of the Working Group: a Business Meeting, a Science Meeting on “The Development of Aperture Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy”, and a Science Meeting on “Recent Research”.

Commission 51 met on August 12, 2009. Outgoing President Alan Boss chaired the meeting, and there were several dozen members present, including incoming President William Irvine, incoming Vice President Pascale Ehrenfreund, and outgoing Past President Karen Meech. Commission 51 (C51) was re-authorized for a term of six more years at the 2006 Prague General Assembly of the IAU, and hence comes up for renewal at the 2012 IAU General Assembly in Beijing, China.

During the General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro the Division IV meeting, and the meetings of the participating working groups and commissions, were held on thursday 6th (session 1 and 2) and friday 7th (sessions 1, 2, 3, 4).

The CSBN meeting held in Rio de Janeiro on August 11 was attended by just six members, including Pam Kilmartin as the acting chair, and several visitors. Since there was not a quorum of members, it was not possible to make any decisions. But there was a good discussion on many topics, from which several points emerged that should be more fully discussed by the whole committee during the next few months: