First Circular - New Century of X-ray Astronomy

[Michael Arida <arida@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

The following is the first notification for an upcoming symposium
sent to the ASCA News and HEASARC News email exploders. 

We apologize if you receive duplicate copies of this message from our

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First Circular of the Symposium
"New Century of X-ray Astronomy"
March 6-8, 2001
Yokohama, Japan

	This is the first announcement of an X-ray symposium entitled 
"New Century of X-ray Astronomy", which is planned in March 2001, at 
Yokohama, Japan. It should be the first X-ray symposium in the 
twenty-first century.
	Following two subjects will be the major goals of the 
symposium. The first half of the symposium will be dedicated for the 
latest reports from the two giant missions, Chandra and Newton, with 
ongoing missions, ASCA, Beppo-SAX, and RXTE. Here we would like to 
ask speakers to put emphasis not on the individual results but on the 
basic problems revealed by these recent observations. They will point 
the direction of the X-ray astronomy in the coming new century, which 
should be discussed in the latter half of the symposium. Possible 
future missions to investigate these problems could be the high 
resolution spectroscopy mission, the hard X-ray imaging telescopes, 
extra-large area (> a few tens of square meter) telescopes, X-ray 
interferometers and so on. It would be also important to listen to 
the scientific point of views of astronomers in different wave bands 
and theories. The final goal is the discussion of the prospects of 
X-ray astronomy in long time range such as the first few decades of 
the new century.
	The programme will include several sessions with a couple of 
review talks and several contribution papers in each session. Major 
issues in the programme are;
1. Highlights of current missions
2. Problems revealed by the missions of the 20 th Century
3. Science and technology of missions in the 21 st Century
Poster sessions will be held in parallel to the oral sessions. We 
consider a special arrangement to submit all proceeding papers to a 
refereed journal.

Organizing Committee will arrange the details of the programme, 
consulting the International Advisory Committee, as follows,

	Prahlad Agrawal (TIFR, India),  Roger Blandford (CalTech, USA),
	Giuseppina Fabbiano (CFA, USA),  Guenter Hasinger(AIP, Germany),
	Katsuji Koyama(Kyoto Univ., Japan),  Kazuo Makishima (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan),
	Luigi Piro (IAS, C.N.R. Rome, Italy),  Arvind Parmar (ESTEC, Netherlands),
	Hiroshi Tsunemi (Osaka Univ.),  Martin Turner (Univ. of Leicester, UK),
	Nicholas White (NASA/GSFC, USA)

The symposium will be provided by the organizing committee;

	Hajime Inoue (ISAS, Japan: Chair), Hideyo Kunieda (ISAS, Secretary)
	Nobuyuki Kawai (RIKEN), Shunji Kitamoto (Osaka Univ.),
	Kazuhisa Mitsuda (ISAS), Takaya Ohashi (Tokyo Met. Univ.),
	Tadayuki Takahashi (ISAS), Yuzuru Tawara (Nagoya Univ.)

For the real operation of the symposium, Organizing Committee will 
ask the help by the Science Secretaries.

Web page is ready at 
http://www.astro.isas.ac.jp/conference/newcentx/index-e.html.
If you are interested in this symposium, please submit Preliminary 
Registration Form before 15 August, 2000 to keep you informed for the 
symposium (the second circular will be sent in September 2000 with 
registration forms). If you do not have an access to the web or would 
like to alter some information that was submitted, please e-mail us 
or fax to the contact address;

	Hideyo Kunieda
	The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
	3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 229-8510 Japan
	Fax: 81-42-759-8455
	E-mail: newcentx@astro.isas.ac.jp

	The location of the symposium site is in the heart of the 
Yokohama water front area. This is the first port opened to foreign 
countries after the long seclusion of Japan in Edo era. Now a days, 
it is renovated to an attractive area for all generations with 
various amusement facilities, shopping malls, and hotels. It is about 
30 km south west of Tokyo. Shinkansen, the bullet-train will allow us 
to get Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka within a few hours from Yokohama.
	We are looking forward to seeing you at this exciting symposium.

					Hajime Inoue
					Chair of Organizing Committee
					Institute of Space and 
                                        Astronautical Science