RXTE Birthday Plans

[terri@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov]

Apologies if you receive this notice more than once. We are hoping to
reach everyone who worked on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer mission
with the news of our 10th birthday party plans!

New: Hotel Deadline extended to January 5, 2006!!!

Come help us celebrate 10 years of RXTE, with two great events!
Out-of-town guests see our hotel information, below.

Thursday, January 12 - Birthday Party & Dinner
 4:30 PM - 8:00 PM, GSFC Rec Center

Beer, wine, dinner, cake, reunion and celebration - all are invited!
Tickets are $15 per person. Please pay in advance (see below). Attendees
must have a GSFC regular or visitor badge, or must be a US citizen. If you
are not a US citizen and have not already made arrangements for a visitor
badge, then unfortunately we cannot get access to GSFC for you, in the
time remaining before the event.

 To purchase tickets:
Attendees at GSFC, see either:

Sandy Barnes    T6 room 02      301-286-7780

Terri Shaffer   T6 room 26      301-286-4645

Pam Levell      B2 room 250     301-286-9662


US Citizens without GSFC badges, or non-citizens with Visitor badges:

Please call one of the below by Monday, January 9, 2006, and have your
name added to the list of birthday party attendees. You may pay at the
door, as long as we have your name on our list.
 Sandy Barnes: (301) 286-7780
 Terri Shaffer: (301) 286-4645

 Friday, January 13 - "RXTE: A Decade of Exploring the Extreme Universe"
  Mini-Conference

 8:20 AM - 4:30 PM, GSFC Building 3

Join us for a mini-conference celebrating RXTE science, with invited talks
and poster session. The Agenda, shown below, includes galactic and
extragalactic science, theory and observation. To participate in the
poster session, contact Dr. Jean Swank. There is no charge for attending
the conference; anyone with a regular or visitor Goddard badge, or US
citizenship may come. We regret that there is now insufficient time to
arrange visitor badges for non-US citizens, if you have not already done
so.

 To attend:
Attendence is free, but please RSVP to one of the below. Give your name
and say whether you will have a Goddard badge (regular or visitor), or
not. Attendees without a Goddard badge will not be able to gain access if
they do not RSVP.

 Sandy Barnes: (301) 286-7780
 Terri Shaffer: (301) 286-4645

 Hotel & Transportation for Out-of-Town Guests

Hotel
 We have reserved a block of rooms at:
 Holiday Inn Greenbelt NASA/Goddard
 7200 Hanover Drive
 Greenbelt, MD 20770
 1-888-HOLIDAY (888-465-4329)
make reservation
mention group name "XTE Birthday/NASA"
EXTENSION: Rooms must be reserved before January 5, 2005.
 Cost: $134 for Jan. 12, $89 for Jan 13

Transportation

From AAS to Holiday Inn, Greenbelt:
You can take Metro (the Washington, D.C. subway) from the AAS hotel to
the Holiday Inn, Greenbelt. The AAS hotel (Marriott Wardman Park Hotel) is
near the Metro's "red line" station, Woodley Park-Zoo. Enter the Woodley
Park-Zoo station, and follow these directions:
        ^       Get on Metro's "red line" toward Glenmont
        ^       Get off the red line at Ft. Totten
        ^       Transfer to Metro's "green line" to Greenbelt
        ^       Get off at Greenbelt (last stop on the line)
        ^       Take a cab to the Holiday Inn, Greenbelt ($8)
 From Holiday Inn, Greenbelt to NASA/Goddard (GSFC):
 The Holiday Inn has a shuttle bus, and we are making arrangements for it
to transport Birthday Party and Conference attendees to and from Goddard.
We will also try facilitate car and cab pooling to the extent possible,
and local Goddard folk will also be offering rides. Details will be posted
here later, or available at the "HEASARC" booth at the AAS meeting.

 From Greenbelt to Airport:
 There are shuttle services from the Holiday Inn, Greenbelt to all area
airports (Dulles, BWI, and Reagan National). Details are available at the
Holiday Inn, Greenbelt. Visitors may also arrange for van or shuttle
service to pick them up from the GSFC Visitor Parking lot, in front of the
GSFC Main Gate.

Agenda

Time            Title                                           Speaker
8:20 a.m.               Welcome
8:30 a.m.               X-ray Source Variability                A. Levine
8:50 a.m.               High Field Accreting Neutron Stars      M. Finger

9:10 a.m.               SGRs                                    P. Woods
9:25 a.m.               AXPs                                    V. Kaspi
9:40 a.m.               Neutron Stars
                                                              T.Strohmayer
10:00 a.m.      Millisecond Pulsars from X-Ray to Radio D. Chakrabarty
10:20 a.m.      Coffee Break
10:50 a.m.      Cyg X-1                 K. Pottschmidt
11:10 a.m.      Energy-dependent variability from ComptonizationM.
                Gierlinski
11:20 a.m.      Seyfert X-Ray Variability       A. Markowitz
11:40 a.m.      Blazars (RXTE & TeV)    W. Cui
12:00 p.m.      X-Ray Light Curves as Probes of Relativistic Jets in
                Radio-Loud AGNA. Marscher
12:20 p.m.      Lunch
1:20 p.m.              LMXB High Frequencies   M. van der Klis & S.
                       Boutloukos
1:50 p.m.              Black-hole states from a timing perspective     J.
                       Homan
2:10 p.m.              Black Hole Diagnostics          R. Remillard
2:30 p.m.              Black Hole Transients during Outburst Decay J.
                       Tomsick
2:45 p.m.              Estimating Black Hole Spin      J. McClintock
3:00 p.m.              Tea/Coffee
3:30 p.m.
Goddard Scientific Colloquium:
The Impact of Rossi XTE on General Relativistic and High Energy
Astrophysics
F. Lamb

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