[MODEST] M O D E S T 1 5 2nd Announcement

[MODEST15 team]

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***************       M O D E S T  1 5       ***************
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***    Modelling (and Observing) Dense Stellar Systems   ***
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***    Universidad de Concepcion, Chile;  2.-6.3. 2015   ***
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web : http://www.astro-udec.cl/modest15/

mail: modest15 at astro-udec.cl

                      2nd Announcement

The Theory Group at the Departamento de Astronomia at the 
Universidad de Concepcion would like to invite you to 
MODEST 15, in Concepcion, Chile at the 

         2nd - 6th of March 2015.

Registration is still open - please visit our website or use 
the registration form at the end of this e-mail. The
deadline for registrations applying for travel grants is 

         November, 30th 2014. 

We would like to have the registrations from all participants
also by this time, as we will start to finalise our programme 
after that (i.e. assigning talks). But we will consider late 
registrations until the maximum capacity of the conference 
room (approx. 100) is reached. 

Our schedule allows for about 50 talks. We do not 
differentiate between review, invited or contributed talk. 
Every speaker will get a 20 minute talk (strict) plus a 10 
minute discussion period. This gives ample time for fruitful 
discussions after each talk, instead of hosting a discussion 
session at the end of each day. We would like to hand out the 
confirmations for talks soon after the soft deadline above, 
to give participants sufficient time to book their flights to 
Chile as cheap as possible.

The conference website is hosted locally (in contrast to the 
main institute site = without dash), so please use the full 
address above (including the dash and the modest15) to 
connect directly with us. For reasons unknown to us we 
disappeared from Google.

Scientific topics:

 - young embedded clusters and star forming regions
 - globular and open clusters near and far
 - UCDs and galactic nuclei
 - numerical modelling of dense stellar systems

We have decided against special invited speakers but amongst 
the registered persons so far we have: 

 - Sambaran Banerjee
 - Matthew Benacquista
 - Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta
 - Richard de Grijs
 - Douglas Heggie
 - Thijs Kouvenhoven
 - Pavel Kroupa
 - Andreas Kuepper
 - Richard Lane
 - Nathan Leigh
 - Juan Madrid
 - Steve McMillan
 - Steffen Mieske
 - Alessio Mucciarelli
 - Rainer Spurzem
 - Anna Lisa Varri
 - Hans Zinnecker

and many more (including many successful students and young 
postdocs)

Registration Fee:

The MODEST conferences never asked for a registration fee 
and we will continue to do so. The conference itself is fully 
funded and we expect to receive further funding to give 
travel grants and pay for the social activities. In the 
unlikely event that we do not receive further funding, we may 
have to raise a social activity fee, which will be around 
100-150 USD. We will write on the receipt 'conference fee' so 
you might get reimbursed.

Travel grants:

Good news for students as we now can offer free participation 
(no fee for the social activities) and part travel grants in 
order of CLP 120,000 (approx. 200 USD).  
To apply for a travel grant we must receive your registration 
before the end of November 2014. As more funding will be 
allocated in the future, the above amount will be a lower limit.
(For Chilean students we cover the bus fare + cheap 
accommodation)
If sufficient money is coming in, we will take the applications 
of young postdocs and other more senior persons into account.

Social Activities:

We will have a welcome cocktail with early registration on 
the Sunday afternoon before the conference. The Wednesday 
afternoon will be free and we offer an interesting excursion 
to Lota (an old mining town with a lot of history and a 
wonderful park) including a descend into the Chifflon del 
Diablo, an old coal mine, which extends under the ocean. On 
Thursday night we will have a nice conference dinner in a 
typical Chilean (Patagonian) restaurant. 

Special Hotel rate:

The Araucano Hotel in the centre of Concepcion has offered us 
a special reduced price for the conference participants of
CLP 38,000 + 19% IVA (sales tax) for each single or double 
room per night (CLP 38,000 = approx. USD 65 = approx. 50 
Euros). If you are coming from outside of Chile and pay in 
cash with USD or with a foreign credit card then you do not 
have to pay IVA! 

Flights:

Please book your flight to Chile as soon as possible. At the 
moment airfares to Chile during the conference are still 
cheap. The first week of March is just after the main summer 
holiday period in Chile (February). Therefore, the closer you 
get to the actual date of the conference the more expensive 
the flights will be (sometimes about double the amounts we 
show below). With a quick check on the internet we found the 
following prices:

LAN Madrid-Santiago direct: approx 1000 Euros
AirFrance Paris-Santiago direct: approx 1200 Euros
American Airlines Miami-Santiago direct: approx. 1400 USD
Delta Airlines Atlanta-Santiago direct: approx. 1600 USD
Air Canada Toronto-Santiago direct: approx. 1400 Can.Dollar
Qantas Sydney-Santiago direct: approx. 2200 Aus.Dollar
Beijing-Santiago (of course not direct): 1400 - 2000 Euros 
(via US, via Europe or via Australia)

And there are cheaper options (not direct) as well, e.g. from 
Europe via Brasil (TAM), Peru or Argentina.

SOC: (alphabetical order)

Paulina Assmann (Santiago, Chile, co-chair), Michael Fellhauer 
(Concepcion, Chile, chair), Douglas Geisler (Concepcion, Chile),
Douglas Heggie (Edinburgh, UK), Pavel Kroupa (Bonn, Germany), 
Steven McMillan (Philadelphia, USA), Steffen Mieske (Santiago, 
Chile), Simon Portegies-Zwart (Leiden, NL) Rainer Spurzem 
(Beijing, China)

LOC: (alphabetical order)

Paulina Assmann, Joerg Dabringhausen, Nelvy Choque, Michael 
Fellhauer, Graeme Candlish, Raul Dominguez, Juan Pablo Farias, 
Rodrigo Vejar

contact:   modest15 at astro-udec.cl


We hope to see you all in 2015 !

The MODEST15 team

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The registration for MODEST 15 is now open.  

As we do not have a possibility at our institute to host an 
online registration form and we do not want to out-source 
confidential information, we decided to have an old-fashioned 
registration form in text-format which you can cut, fill and 
paste and then please send via e-mail to 

modest15 at astro-udec.cl

--- cut here ----------------

MODEST 15 - Registration form
=============================

first name:
last  name:

affiliation:

e-mail:

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I want to present a:

( ) talk
( ) poster

title:

abstract:



-----------------------------

I am a

( ) student
( ) post-doc
( ) senior scientist

For students (and maybe for postdocs) we have part travel grants
(priority for students with oral presentations)  

I would like to apply for:

( ) social activity fee waived
( ) part travel grant

For all:

I need assistance in booking an accommodation ( )

I want
  ( ) a regular hotel room
  ( ) to share a cheap accommodation

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conference dinner:

We will make sure that a vegetarian option is available, for 
other preferences we cannot give a guarantee.

( ) no special requirements
( ) vegetarian option
( ) other preferences or requirements, please explain:
( ) I do not want to take part.

conference excursion:

We assume that everyone wants to take part but just in case:

( ) I do not want to take part.

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