Useful information |
The lecture hall for presentations is situated in the hotel building complex. According to old YERAC tradition, every participant is supposed to give a short talk. You will be given 15 minutes in total, including 12 minutes for your speech and 3 minutes for questions from the audience. Since our schedule is very tight, we are going to be very restrictive about timing. In case you shall exceed your time, we are going to stop you by any means. You have been warned.
Three prominent radio astronomers are invited to give special lectures, exclusively for YERAC participants. Prof. Richard Wielebinski from Max-Planck Institute will talk about the development of radio astronomy from metre to sub-millimetre wavelengths on Tuesday. Prof. Alexander Wolszczan from Torun will give a lecture on applications of pulsar timing on Wednesday. Finally, Prof. Marek Urbanik from Jagiellonian University will present his talk about radio emission from normal galaxies on Thursday. All invited lectures will start at 9 a.m. and will last for 45 minutes.
Prof. Wielebinski and Prof. Wolszczan will also give special lectures open to the public. The lectures will take place in the seat of Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci (Polish Academy of Sciences and Arts), at Slawkowska St., in the city centre. The lectures are scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday at 5 p.m. If you can understand Polish, you are welcome!
You cannot survive a single day without reading your hot e-mail? Voila, you will get what need. Computer terminals connected to the Internet will be available in the conference site.
All meals -- breakfast, lunch and dinner -- will be served in the restaurant "U Ziyada" on the grounds of Kolegium Polonijne, near the conference site. The conference dinner is scheduled on Wednesday in the restaurant "U Wyrwigrosza" at the city centre. Special dishes are planned for those of you who are vegetarians. All other carnivores will get regular food.
There is a pub in the conference site, so you should not be bored in the nights. The pub is open until very late hours.
This tour will take you to one of the greatest treasures of Poland. The salt mine in Wieliczka was placed by UNESCO on the list of the 12 most precious monuments of the world. The mine has been exploited for 700 years, and the total length of underground corridors reached several hundred kilometres. The oldest part is open for visitors. The 5-kilometre long route leads through galleries and chambers on the mining levels. You will see salt lakes, salt monuments and chapels, and the most beautiful of all - St. Kinga's Chapel, carved out of a huge block of salt. On Thursday afternoon a bus will take you from the conference site directly to Wieliczka, which is only about 15 km from Przegorzaly.
The Jagiellonian University was founded in 1364 by King Casimir the Great, and reconstituted by King Wladyslaw Jagiello, whose name was adopted by the university. The museum is located in Collegium Maius, the oldest university building preserved. For almost 600 years Collegium Maius was the main site of the University housing lecture rooms, a library and professors' apartments. Now the University Senate meets in the library, agreements with other universities and institutions are signed in the Common Room, and honorary doctorates are conferred in the Jagiellonian Assembly Hall. The collections open to the public include the insignia and treasures of the University, precious globes and astronomical instruments, chemical and physical instruments and a gallery of portraits of the most renowned professors. The tour to Collegium Maius is scheduled on Monday afternoon.
In the walking distance from the conference site, on the other end of scenic Wolski forest, on top of the hill there is an astronomical observatory. Located on grounds of the former Austrian fort, now is the institute in the Jagiellonian University. The scientific staff of 36 people works on: physics of comets, photometry of variable stars, solar radio emission, extragalactic radio sources, active galactic nuclei, interstellar and intergalactic matter, physics of galaxies, large scale structure of the Universe and theoretical cosmology. Not too many astronomical instruments can be found there: the most prominent one is the 15 metre old radio telescope. Only short visit to the Observatory is planned.