The RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2008

We will have 8 plenary sessions, two per day, held from 9:00 to 10:30. All plenary sessions will be held in the Larmor lecture theatre. The plenary sessions on Tuesday 1^st April will be slightly shorter, running from 9:15 to 10:30 as Professor Peter Gregson, Vice-Chancellor of QUB, will give the Welcoming Address at 9:00.

There will be a total of 40 parallel sessions, covering NAM, UKSP, and MIST, with several joint UKSP-MIST and NAM-MIST sessions. They are sorted into several broad themes:

Galaxies and Cosmology

P01 - Galaxy formation and evolution

P02 - Dark matter, dark energy, and cosmological parameters

P03 - Clusters and groups of galaxies

P04 - AGN activity and the Growth and Influence of Massive Black Holes

P05 - Gas and galaxies: the intergalactic medium

P06 - Low-z galaxies and stellar populations

P07 - The GAIA mission

P08 - Science with current and future wide-field surveys

Star formation

P09 - Star Formation: The First Three Million Years

P10 - Chemistry as a Probe of Physics in Space

P11 - Massive star clusters: near and far

Low mass stars and planets

P12 - Low mass stars and brown dwarfs

P13 - Exoplanets

P14 - Stellar pulsation and asteroseismology

P15 - Planetary science

P16 - Atmospheres in exo- and solar planets (joint NAM/MIST)

Massive stars, explosions and remnants

P17 - Massive stars

P18 - Supernovae and supernova remnants

P19 - Gamma-ray bursts

P20 - Black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs

P21 - Magnetospheres throughout the Universe (Joint NAM/MIST)

Facilities and instrumentation

P22 - High energy astrophysics

P23 - Current facilities and new instruments

P24 - Future facilities

P25 - ESA Cosmic Visions

P26 - The Virtual Observatory and grid development

General sessions

P28 - YAM@NAM - from stars to galaxies

P29 - Education and outreach

Atomic data

P27 - Atomic data for astrophysics (NAM)

P30 - Solar spectroscopy and atomic data (UKSP)

Solar Physics

P31 - Solar seismology - from the interior to the corona

P32 - Magnetic coupling in the Solar atmosphere

P33 - The explosive Sun

P34 - Magnetic reconnection

P35 - From Sun to Earth and beyond

P36 - Waves and instabilities in space plasmas

P37 - Solar and STP missions forum

Magnetosphere Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

P38 - Atmospheric electrodynamics and climate change

P39 - Substorms in the age of THEMIS

P40 - MIST open session

The full list of sessions, with convenors, location, and timing, is available here. We also have outline timetables (PDF - updated Thursday September 24, 2009) showing the session times in a block format.

Delgates wishing to submit an abstract for consideration as either a poster or oral presentation should follow the instructions emailed to them after registering. Instructions for authors can be found here and the status of submitted abstracts will be available online once registration opens.

The Scientific Organising Committee is:

• Professor Stephen Smartt (Chair)
• Dr Cathy Ramsbottom
• Professor Philip Dufton
• Professor Alan Fitzsimmons
• Dr Andrew Kavanagh (Lancaster University - MIST)
• Dr Rubina Kotak
• Dr Mihalis Mathioudakis
• Professor Tom Millar
• Dr Don Pollacco

The SOC is grateful to the following external advisors:

• Professor Gerry Doyle (Armagh Observatory)
• Dr Lyndsay Fletcher (University of Glasgow - UKSP chair)
• Dr Duncan MacKay (University of St Andrews - UKSP secretary)
• Professor Valery Nakariakov (University of Warwick)
• Professor Max Pettini (University of Cambridge)
• Professor Ian Smail (University of Durham)
• Professor Andy Taylor (University of Edinburgh)
• Professor Steven Tobias (University of Leeds)