Planetary and Proto-Planetary Nebulae: From IRAS to ISO

There are two questions that we can ask ourselves in order to describe this workshop. The first question is a double question: why a conference on this subject and why a workshop? The first idea of organizing this workshop came while reading the scientific objectives of one of the instruments onboard the ISO satel lite (a phase A document concerning the IR camera). On going through the scientific motivations for building the instrument I realized with surprise that no mention was made of Planetary Nebulae (PN). At present this is no longer true. There is a chapter indicating the capabilities of the camera in the PN field and what we can reasonably expect from that instrument. But it was at this moment that the first idea of organizing a workshop on the subject of PN came. Of course there are other, stronger motivations. The first one is that I think this is the right moment after IRAS. I think we all spent the last two or three years working on IRAS data. IRAS represented a corner-stone for those working on Planetary Nebulae: the amount of data that came out of the instruments onboard the satellite was enormous and opened up new ways of looking at planetary nebulae, as well as at other fields.