Pulsar Astrophysics: The Next Fifty Years

Welcome all participants to IAUS 337. We hope that you have had a good journey and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning.

If you want a sneaky peak at the amazing talks and excellent posters you can read the abstract booklet or check out the programme.

Remember that we are @50YearsOfPsrs and #psr50yrs on twitter and you can contact people on the phone numbers further down this page if needed.

Please also remember to be on time for your bus.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming you next week to Jodrell Bank to celebrate 50 years of pulsars.

Please find below important information on transport to and from the site. We also include the previously distributed information on registration, the programme, internet access, emergency numbers, etc…

Transportation & Monday morning

Please read the information below carefully.
There are 4 buses being used to transport people to and from the hotels. Please check your bus and the time it leaves.

You must be on time for your bus. If you miss the bus it is your responsibility to get to JBO. You can check with your hotel if you need to order a taxi. You can find details of getting to the site here: http://www.jodrellbank.net/visit/plan-a-visit/getting-here/
If you do not plan on using the bus at any time please let your bus monitor know.

Bus 1: Wilmslow Station, Alderley Edge Hotel, De Trafford Hotel

This bus will leave from Wilmslow Rail Station at 8:40 am exactly.
Please arrive at the station in time.

It will then travel to De Trafford Hotel in Alderley Edge. Please be ready to catch the bus from 8:50 am outside De Trafford Hotel. Can the people staying in the Alderley Edge Hotel please make their way down the hill to De Trafford and get on the bus there.

Your bus monitor will be Rob Lyon.

Bus 2: Cranage Hall

This bus will leave from Cranage Hall at 8:45 am exactly.

Your bus monitor will be Kuo Liu.

Bus 3: Macclesfield Travel Lodge

This bus will leave from the Macclesfield Travel Lodge at 8:30am exactly.

Your bus monitor will be Maura Pilia.

Bus 4: Premier Inn Wilmslow and Coach and Four Wilmslow

This bus will leave from the Premier Inn Wilmslow at 8:30 am exactly. It will travel to the Coach and Four and depart from out front at 8:45 am exactly.

Your bus monitor will be Daniele Michilli.

The buses are arranged to take people back to their hotels at the end of the day either directly after the talks have finished or after the social events in the evenings.

Travelling by Car

If you are coming by car, please make sure to park in the Discovery Centre car park and then enter the site through the Discovery Centre entrance. Instructions are here: http://www.jodrellbank.net/visit/plan-a-visit/getting-here/
Please check as there are road works in the area.  Also, if you are coming by car, can we please ask that you arrive just before 9 am on Monday morning so that we can get you registered before the people on the buses arrive.

Transport from the Airport

Please see the website for more information on this: http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/venue/travel-and-accomodation/

Advice for individual hotels is given there, too.

Registration

Registration will take place on Monday morning before the first talks. At registration we will be asking you to confirm if you are staying for lunch on Friday and also arranging any joint transfers to the airport.

Programme, Speakers, and Posters

The meeting will run from 9:00 every morning with coffee available and the talks starting at 9:30. Talks will finish at 17:30 every day except on Friday when we will be finishing at 13:15.

On Monday evening we have a welcome reception which will finish between 19:00 and 19:30. On Thursday evening there is a banquet which will end at 21:00. The buses have been arranged to take you back to your hotels after the last talks or after the reception or banquet respectively.

We have an excellent programme (http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/programme/) with a combination of historical and contemporary reviews and contributed talks. The invited talks will be 25 minutes long with 5 minutes for questions and the contributed talks will be 12 minutes long with 3 minutes for questions. A book of abstracts will be supplied in electronic form at the start of the meeting.

As we have a packed programme and we want to maximise the time for presentations and questions, we will be using one laptop for all presentations. It will be capable of presenting Keynote, powerpoint, and PDF presentations. Please ensure that you put your talk on the laptop at the latest during the break before the session in which you are speaking so that you can make sure that any movies, etc… work. There will be someone there to assist you if there are any issues.

We have an exciting selection of posters (approaching 100!). Could those preparing posters please ensure that they are A0 in size and that they are in portrait format so that they fit on the poster boards. We will be supplying velcro/pins for affixing them to the poster boards. Unfortunately with so many posters it isn’t practical to do a sparkler session, however the coffee and lunch sessions will be co-located with the posters and we will be running two poster coffees where people are encouraged to go and stand with their posters so interested people can come and ask you questions.

Please note that we will be live streaming the talks but only on site, i.e. to the internet room. If, for any reason, you don’t wish your talk to be live streamed do please let us know in advance.

Mobile Phones and Internet Access

As you will be aware, the site is a working radio observatory and therefore we kindly request you to have your mobile phones, wifi, and bluetooth off when on site. We will be making landlines available if you need to make calls.

There will therefore also not be any wifi available. There will be a few computers available and we will also have a limited number of wired connections. Unfortunately there is a limit to the number of IP addresses which we can support and so we cannot offer you all connectivity as each one needs to be manually assigned to a laptop. So we suggest, where possible, that you share compute resources if needed, or even better skip your emails for a few days and enjoy the talks.

If you do absolutely require access for your laptop to the internet while you are on site please have your MAC address for your ethernet card ready when you arrive to register on Monday morning.

All computing access will be in a dedicated space where we will also be streaming the talks.

Safety on Site

The observatory is currently undergoing significant construction work as the SKA headquarters are extended. It is therefore imperative that you obey all signs on site and do not go to the Observatory nor SKA buildings without express permission and with a guide. Please also accept and act on all safety instructions from Observatory and Discovery Centre staff.

We also note that the entire site is strictly non-smoking and so guests who wish to smoke will need to hold on until they have left the site.

Breaks and Social Occasions

Coffee and Tea will be provided before the meeting and at 11:00 and 15:30. Lunch will be an hour at 13:00.

Lunch on Wednesday is sponsored by the SKA.

On Monday evening there will be a reception with drinks and canapes.

On Thursday evening there will be a banquet dinner with a quiz and a presentation by Ian Morrison on the history of pulsar observing at Jodrell Bank Observatory.

Outreach Lunch

On Thursday lunchtime, there will be an informal outreach session for casual discussion. This will be for those that wish to share experiences of any engagement work they have been involved in or for those that are simply interested in finding out more. Those interested should grab their lunch first and meet at the breakout area provided (location TBC).

Observatory Tours

We will be hosting some observatory tours during lunchtime on Tuesday with possible spillover to Friday afternoon. Unfortunately there are a limited number of places. There will be a sign up sheet available at the first coffee session, it will be first come first served. If you are here on Friday after lunch then please choose that option for a tour.

Conference Proceedings

There will of course be conference proceedings for this meeting and we will be in touch soon about the details for providing your contribution.

A fraction of your conference fee has paid for online access to the proceedings, if you wish to have a hard copy do please get in touch.

Restaurants

We have placed a selection of restaurants close to each hotel on our website: http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/venue/local-restaurants/

As well as these there are many nice pubs in the local areas to try. We recommend that you make bookings for restaurants as many can fill up. Also note that some restaurants may be closed on Monday.

We will provide assistance and phone access if you need to make bookings during the day.

Telephone Numbers

0161 306 9400/9429  — Observatory
0147 757 1766  — Discovery Centre  – Host location of the Meeting. Staffed.
0749 139 4287  —  BWS Mobile number but only on when not on site.

999 – emergencies, works in the UK (ambulance, fire, police)

112 – emergencies, works throughout the EU (ambulance, fire, police)

101 – police, non-emergency situations

111 – non-emergency medical advice

The programme is now available here.

We have now reached the capacity of the venue and the participant list is currently full. Further registrations will be held in a queue ordered by date of application, and we will contact you should places become available again.

This is a reminder that the registration for the IAUS 337 is open.

Thanks to those that have already registered, we are at about 50% of our capacity at the moment.

If you haven’t yet registered, please note that a link to the registration details can be found at the bottom of this post.

For those that have already registered, could we please remind you that registration is not finalised until you have paid, unless you have requested financial support.  Note that when you pay, unless you are bringing guests to the dinner or reception, you should only pay 300 pounds. If you are being asked to pay more than this, please check whether you have stated that you are bringing a guest for the dinner/reception.

Also, please remember to submit abstracts for talks and posters as soon as possible.

Most importantly, remember to book your accommodation as soon as possible and let iau337_loc@pulsarastronomy.net know where you are staying as well so we can organise transport.

Looking forward to seeing many of you at JBO – The LOC and SOC.

Registration Announcement: IAU Symposium 337 – 50 Years of Pulsars
Jodrell Bank Observatory, United Kingdom – 4-8 September 2017
The registration page can be found here.
Please email any queries to: iau337_loc@pulsarastronomy.net

A poster for the meeting has now been added to the site, and can be found on the poster page.

Please use the png version for all web purposes and the pdf version for printing.

Registration Announcement: IAU Symposium 337 – 50 Years of Pulsars
Jodrell Bank Observatory, United Kingdom – 4-8 September 2017
http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for IAU Symposium 337 to mark 50 years of wonderful pulsar and neutron star research. This symposium will be held at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire in the United Kingdom on the 4th-8th September 2017. Apologies if you get this announcement multiple times. Please forward this email to anyone you think might not have received this.

Registration:

Because of space restrictions at the venue, the number of participants will need to be capped. Please register as early as possible to avoid disappointment. The registration will open on Monday the 27 February 2017. The deadline for registration is the Tuesday the first of July 2017, however, the registration will close earlier if the maximum number of participants is reached. Registration takes place using the following website: http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/registration

Please note that the registration fee includes a drinks reception, conference dinner, lunch on every day, and depending on accommodation choice, bus transport to and from the venue, and a conference bag.

Please make use of the available fields to let us know about dietary requirements and if you will be travelling with children and are interested in options for child care.

Once you have registered you will be sent an emailing detailing payment options and abstract submission. Please note that registration will only be confirmed once the registration fee is paid.

Accommodation/transport:

The venue of the conference is not accessible via public transport. Shuttle busses will be provided to/from a number of pick-up points and the cost is included in the registration fee. Please refer to the website for accommodation suggestions, which allows you to make use of this service.

We highly recommend that you book your accommodation well in advance and please inform the LOC of your choice of accommodation as soon as possible so we know who needs transport. Our list of recommended hotels can be found here: http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/venue/travel-and-accomodation

Financial support requests:

There are some funds available from the IAU and other sponsors to support some of the participants. The deadline for financial support requests is the 15th of  April 2017.  Applications for funding support can be made through the form at: http://pulsarastronomy.net/iaus337/venue/request-for-support/

Scope of the conference:

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of pulsars and is thus an excellent moment to reflect on what we have learnt from these remarkable physical laboratories and to cast our eyes forward to the exciting opportunities they provide for physical and astrophysical studies in the coming decades. The look back is important as there have been so many significant milestones that we can continue to learn from while the look forward to the future is essential as the continuous improvement of current facilities and building of superb new facilities like FAST, MeerKAT, SKA, CTA, advanced gravitational wave detectors, eLISA, E-Rosita, Astrosat, Astro-H, HMXT, Spektr-RG and NICER, to name just a few promise decades of exciting (astro-)physics to follow. The topics to be covered will include:

Current and Next Generation Pulsar Surveys
Gravity tests with pulsars
Gravitational Wave science with pulsar timing arrays
Neutron Star Masses, Glitches and Equations of State
The Neutron Star Zoo
The multi-messenger view of Pulsars
Pulsar emission physics across the electromagnetic spectrum
Neutron Star Binaries
Constraining the magneto-ionic properties of the ISM and local IGM using pulsars
The future of pulsar research and facilities

and we already have an exciting group of confirmed invited speakers:

Matthew Bailes
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell
Dipankar Bhattacharya
Jim Cordes
Francesca D’Antono
Elizabeth Ferrara
Alice Harding
Roger Romani
Bryn Haskell
Wim Hermsen
Vicky Kaspi
Michael Kramer
K J Lee
Dick Manchester
Joanna Rankin
Joe Taylor
Roberta Zanin

We look forward to welcoming you to Jodrell Bank to celebrate this milestone which also coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Lovell telescope.

Ben Stappers and Jocelyn Bell-Burnell (for the SOC)
Rene Breton, Mike Keith, Mitch Mickaliger, Ben Stappers and Patrick Weltevrede (for the LOC)

IAU Symposium 337 – 50 Years of Pulsars

Jodrell Bank Observatory, United Kingdom — 4-8 September 2017

This page will be updated soon.