Orange Meeting

In 2009, the Curtin Institute for Radio Astronomy (CIRA) hosted the annual “Orange” pulsar meeting in parallel with a Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) workshop. These events ran over two days, the 16th and 17th of April.

The Orange meeting is an open forum for the discussion of local and international research related to pulsar astronomy. The meeting will be kept fairly informal and aims to provide a chance for the community to catch up on recent events and plan future collaborations. It is expected that all attendees will give a short (15 minute) presentation describing their activities. This could include new results, current research or future plans.

The first day of the meeting was be dedicated to individual presentations and question time. On the second day, we held a PPTA workshop, including time for discussion of operational and technical matters.

The schedule of talks and events can be found here, along with copies of the slides presented by each speaker.

The meeting will be held at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, located in Building 610 and 611 of Curtin's Bentley campus (in a group of buildings collectively known as Technology Park). Click here to see the location on Google Maps. Curtin provides an interactive campus map here. Buildings 610 and 611 are in the uppermost part of the map.

The CIRA buildings have an adjacent visitor's car park which can be entered from Turner Ave. There is plenty of space for visitor's cars, so parking should not be a problem if you choose to hire a car during your stay. Look for the “Curtin” signs as you drive through Technology Park. There will be additional signposts in place for the meeting.

Public transport is available in the form of buses that stop on Hayman Road. Please see Transperth for more information.

The conference room has an accessible switch with a large number of free ports that are connected to a high-speed network. There is a large board-room table that people can sit at while using their laptops on the internet. Unfortunately, there is no wireless in the building, so you will need to bring your own cable and it will not be easy to access the network during talks (which may be a good thing).

There is a conference phone in the meeting room that can be reached on the following number: (08) 9266 1314. We are not anticipating significant interest in remote attendance, so this is a single line only and will be available to the first person or group wishing to dial in. If anyone would like to attend via Skype, please let Aidan know and we will attempt to set up a webcam on a laptop.

Accommodation will not be centrally organised, attendees should make their own arrangements. Curtin university has a comprehensive list of various accommodation options (with varying levels of cost and comfort). Some useful links are provided below:

• On Campus Student Accommodation
• Off-Campus Budget Accommodation
• Nearby Hotels
• Nearby Apartments

Local staff have recommended Drakes Apartments, who can package accommodation and rental cars together. It might be worth getting together in small groups and sharing the cost. Many places of interest in the Perth area are best reached by car as the public transport network is not extensive.

There is no registration fee associated with Orange or the PPTA workshop. Registration information should be provided by adding an entry to this table, following the instructions given in the announcement email.

View the current list of participants.

There will be a conference dinner at 19:30 on the 16th, at the Bellhouse Cafe, located on the end of Mends Street Jetty, The Esplanade, South Perth. Since there was no registration fee for the conference, guests will be expected to pay for their own meal. The Bellhouse has good variety (particularly seafood) and a wonderful view over the Swan river to the city. Driving directions from the conference venue can be found here.

South Perth has several other good restaurants for those wishing to eat out on other nights.

CIRA will provide morning and afternoon tea and a light lunch, but other meals (including the conference dinner), accommodation and travel expenses must be paid for by the attendees.

The local organisers are Aidan Hotan – a [dot] hotan [at] curtin [dot] edu [dot] au, Jean-Pierre Macquart - j [dot] macquart [at] curtin [dot] edu [dot] au and Jennifer Talbot - j [dot] talbot [at] curtin [dot] edu [dot] au.

The scientific program organisers are Aidan Hotan – a [dot] hotan [at] curtin [dot] edu [dot] au and George Hobbs - George [dot] Hobbs [at] atnf [dot] csiro [dot] au.