The fourth “Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics” was held in Playa de las Américas (Adeje, Tenerife) from the 7th to 18th December 1992, organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad Internacional Menéndez-Pelayo. A total of 85 participants from 21 countries world-wide attended the meeting.

This volume contains a series of nine courses which were delivered during the School. The aim of the lectures was to portray a thorough, up-dated view on the field of Infrared Astronomy.

The last School dedicated to Infrared Astronomy before this one (the legendary ISA Course held in Erice, Italy) took place in 1977, fifteen years ago. Since then, dramatic changes in our understanding of the Infrared Universe -pushed forward by the corresponding advances in telescopes, instruments and detector capabilities- have strongly influenced all branches of Astrophysics. One of the primary goals at the present School was to put the new generation of astrophysicists into contact with the extremely important new findings which have surfaced from recent infrared research, and to present and discuss the fundamental physical ideas emerging from those results.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Commission of the European Community (Human Capital and Mobility Programme -Euroconferences), the Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science) and the Government of the Canary Islands for helping us to fund the School. They, together with HOTESA and their “Hotel Gran Tinerfe”, made it possible to allocate grants to over 75% of attendees.