Volume 25, December 2006 - Upcoming Meetings

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Exotic and transient astrophysical phenomena reveal the violent and capricious nature of the universe. Wide-field and all-sky monitoring in the X-ray, gamma-ray, and more recently optical, bands has already led to a wealth of discoveries such as magnetars and gamma-ray bursts which probe extreme realms of physics and yet were not anticipated prior to their discovery. Radio telescopes have a tradition of providing high angular resolution in narrow fields or large fields of view with limited time resolution. A notable exception to this approach led to the discovery of pulsars thirty years ago.

Several different routes to wide-field, or even all-sky, observations with high time resolution are now appearing, on the road to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Coupled with this, the past few years have seen the discovery of new classes of radio transient, such as the RRATs and the Galactic Centre Radio Transient. This workshop will, for the first time, combine the astrophysics of rapid radio variability with the techniques of wide-field transient searches, in anticipation of an exciting decade ahead of us.

Scientific topics will include all aspects of transient and rapidly variable radio phenomena, including theory of explosive events and particle acceleration, and observations of gamma ray bursts, microquasars, pulsars and RRATs, flare stars, exoplanets, scintillation and intra-day variability of Active Galactic Nuclei. There will be extensive discussion of the coming new generation of wide-field radio observatories (e.g. ATA, LOFAR, SKA prototypes), and programs to monitor the radio sky to search for known, unknown (i.e. serendipitous) and known unknown (e.g. SETI) phenomena.

The meeting will be held in the Peloponese region of Greece, in the village of Kerastari, nestled in the mountains of ancient Arcadia (close to the town of Tripolis), and we aim to schedule lots of time for discussion and interaction, as well as relaxation. Based on past experience, we will probably end the workshop with a large party involving the whole village.

Participation at the workshop will be limited to 80 people, and as a result some selection may be necessary. We encourage all those interested to pre-register via the simple form at the bottom of this message, as soon as possible.

Invited speakers include:

Mitch Begelman, Geoff Bower, Dave Jauncey, Shri Kulkarni, Maura McLaughlin, Rachel Osten, Sterl Phinney (tbc), Anatoly Spitkovsky, Jill Tarter

Scientific Organising Committee:

Rob Fender (chair), Stephane Corbel, Bryan Gaensler, John Kirk, Joe Lazio, Jean-Pierre Macquart, Sera Markoff, Dave Meier, Ralph Spencer, Tasso Tzioumis

The conference website can be found at:

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/Dynamic2007/