[MODEST] Proposal for a MODEST-Satellite-Meeting in Edinburgh in December 2004

[Stefan Deiters]

Dear colleagues of MODEST,

Please find below a proposal for a MODEST-Satellite meeting in Edinburgh in
December 2004. Before we really get into organizing everything we would like
to have some (non-committing) feedback from the MODEST-community. Please
send a short E-Mail by February 29 to S.Deiters at ed.ac.uk stating that 

- you would be interested and would consider to attend or
- you would be interested, but can't make it at these dates (please
  give alternative) or
- you are not interested or won't make at any date in winter 2004/5

If you don't reply to this E-Mail, we assume that you are not interested. We
plan to inform you about the outcome in early March, so that everyone could
make travel arrangements well in advance of the proposed meeting. 

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Douglas Heggie and Stefan Deiters


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PROPOSAL for a MODEST-Satellite Meeting (MODEST-5a) in Edinburgh


1. INTRODUCTION

At the last MODEST-workshop in Geneva the participants agreed to have only
one MODEST-meeting every year with the next two meetings to be held in
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 2004 and in Evanston, Illinois, USA in 2005.
The next MODEST-meeting in Europe will be MODEST-6 in Prague 2006. In order
to have at least one MODEST-like workshop in Europe before 2006 we are
thinking of organizing a MODEST-Satellite meeting in December 2004 in
Edinburgh. Everyone is welcome.

We propose a 2.5 days meeting from Monday, 13th to Wednesday, December 15th
2004, noon although we are able to choose other days of this week if it
turns out that these dates are not suitable for the majority.  The meeting
would be held in the School of Mathematics, James Clerk Maxwell Building,
within the King's Buildings campus of the University of Edinburgh. 


2. TOPICS

Although the interest of the locals is focused on 

- modeling of individual star clusters in relation to observations 
- gas models with stellar evolution
- Monte-Carlo-codes
- N-body simulations
- pure stellar dynamics 

we would welcome other topics to be covered, but this certainly depends on
the participants and your suggestions. 

We suggest keeping with the usual style of the MODEST-workshops and leave
plenty of room for discussions.


3. ACCOMMODATION

Although Edinburgh is regarded as one of the more expensive cities in the UK
it is possible to find accommodation from £25 for a single room with private
bathroom. Within 15 minutes walking distance from the King's building campus
are several guest houses and hotels which should suit everyone's need as far
as comfort and budget is concerned.   


3. GETTING TO EDINBURGH

Edinburgh Airport which is 12 km west of the city centre is served by major
airlines to a host of destinations in Europe. Direct transatlantic links are
provided from Glasgow International Airport, one hour from Edinburgh
(though the locals prefer to fly via London!). 

Easyjet (www.easyjet.com), a European low-cost airline, offers flights from
several airports directly to Edinburgh. Especially it offers frequent
services from Edinburgh to London-Luton, London-Gatwick and London-Stansted.
The latter may be useful for further low-cost travel within Europe, but
please allow at least two hours for changing planes in London.