The RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2008

• 4 April 2008 - STFC community session MP3 now available
• 19 March 2008 - Registration Desk details are now given above
• 12 March 2008 - Observing in front of the Lanyon?
• 11 March 2008 - PDFs of the conference booklet are online
• 9 March 2008 - Full parallel session programme online
• 7 March 2008 - Registration passes 600. Caps may be needed...
• 6 March 2008 - More abstracts online.
• 6 March 2008 - Reception and Dinner at capacity.
• 4 March 2008 - Abstracts appearing online, 550+ delegates, CUP poster prizes.
• 29 February 2008 - More milestones - 500+ delegates, 350+ abstracts.
• 28 February 2008 - Milestones - 400 delegates, 300 for dinner.
• 18 February 2008 - Updated timetables posted.
• 1 February 2008 - Conference dinner menu posted.
• 30 January 2008 - Details posted on the prizes for the student poster competition (two Dell laptops!).
• 23 January 2008 - Information posted on the five-a-side competition.

After some requests we're pleased to offer the entire STFC community session from Thursday as an MP3 file - 47MB.

The Registration Desk location and times of opening are now on the front page.

Two members of the LOC were just spotted behaving suspiciously with a telescope in front of the Lanyon building!

If you're interested, you can download the entire conference booklet as a set of three PDF files. These are the files sent to our printers, so they're a few MB each - the first two are designed to be printed on a colour printer, single sided. The final PDF is intended for a duplex monochrome printer.

Naturally, properly printed and bound copies will be given to all delegates at registration, but if you can't wait, help yourself!

The full science programme is now available online. All parallel session abstracts, and talk times, are on the website.

We have just passed the record milestone of 600 registered delegates. While it's wonderful that the conference has attracted so much attention - this should be the best attended NAM ever - we are concerned about our ability to cope with so many people. We have therefore decided that we will have to impose a hard cap of 650 delegates, and registration will close at that point.

Abstracts for sessions P01, 03, 05, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 36, 39, 40 are available online. Others to follow shortly - with luck!.

We are now at capacity for the Dinner and Reception - no further registrations can be accepted.

Session chairs are now making decisions on speakers and posters. These will be placed online as they are made available to us. So far P07, 11, 17, 24, 25, 25a, 26, 29, and 36 are online.

We now have over 550 registered delegates!

Cambridge University Press have kindly donated book tokens for their books, which will be available as prizes in the student poster competition.

As of 5PM:

• 518 delegates
• 356 abstracts
• one very tired registrations person...

A few milestones passed today, as the inevitable late rush of registrations came in. We passed 400 delegates registered, and also hit our limit of 300 for the conference dinner. Unfortunately this means it is no longer possible to register for the dinner online, though if interested it is worth enquiring at the registration desk on Monday 31^st about cancellations.

An updated timetable, with revised room allocations and details of the STFC/RAS sessions is now available.

Details of the conference dinner menu are now available.

We are grateful to Dell Computer NI for their donation of two laptop computers as prizes for the student poster competition. We encourage all students to register promptly and send in their abstracts!

David Jess has uploaded some information on the ever-popular five-a-side football tournament. If you want to enter, get in touch as soon as possible!

We intend to submit all abstracts for posters or talks presented at NAM2008 to the NASA ADS. You will need to signify your agreement to this when submitting an abstract. Our data protection statement has been amended accordingly.

We have had some queries about making block payments online - we have added notes on this to the payments page.

The 'final' version of the science programme has been uploaded. The only changes involve P12 (Low mass stars and brown dwarfs) and P28 (YAM@NAM).

Registration is now open!

The conference poster is available as a PDF file (3.4MB). Printed copies will be sent out next week.

A near-final version of the science programme has been posted. This will be finalised by next week when registration opens.

The first draft of the NAM2008 science programme has been added to the site.

The website for the RAS NAM2008 at Queen's University Belfast launched today. Over the next week a detailed scientific programme will be made available.