To give you an idea of what to expect, Sarah has put together a map, see below, of useful places and some local favourite hangouts.

We’re currently working on the conference programme and will be back with news on that in early November. If you have any questions or ideas, email us at poc AT dotastronomy.com. We want to hear from you!

View .Astronomy locations in a larger map

Getting there

At a stone’s throw from Schiphol airport and several major transport hubs, Leiden is exceptionally well connected to the world. If you’re flying into Schiphol, there are a couple of options for making your way to Leiden. The most convenient is to catch a train to Leiden Central (Centraal in Dutch), these run about every 10 minutes and take between 15 and 20 minutes. They usually leave from platform 5-6 and a single costs around 5 euro. You have to buy a ticket before boarding and there are plenty of yellow ticket machines and ticket counters in the airport/station hall.

From Leiden Central it’s a 15 minute walk to the Lorentz Center and a little further to the Bastion Hotel. Given the time of year, you can jump in a bus or taxi, both of which can be found just outside the station if you take the “Centrum” exit. The Lorentz Center website has detailed instructions and links to timetables.

You can take a taxi all the way from the airport to Leiden too of course, this costs around 40 euro. But the motorway is often very congested between Leiden and Schiphol so you may not save very much on time.

We’d also like to flag up some alternatives to flying for those who are green minded or don’t like flying. If you’re coming from Belgium, France or Germany we recommend you look into trains. The Leiden area is well integrated on the European rail network – to Belgium and France on the high-speed Thalys trains (get the train to Den Haag/The Hague and change there for a short hop to Leiden), and to Germany on the always efficient Deutsche Bahn services (change at Utrecht or Schiphol for Leiden).

From Britain you can get the boat from Harwich to Hoek van Holland, during the daytime or overnight, from where it’s around 30 mins by train to Leiden.

Local transportation

Leiden is well served by buses, which connect the centre of town to the surrounding villages and the coast. The Lorentz Center and the Bastion Hotel, where most of the out-of-towners will stay, are situated in the village of Oegstgeest, around 2-3 km from central Leiden along the road to Noordwijk and the coast.The Center is co-located with Leiden Observatory, the University’s astronomy department, in the oddly-shaped J.H. Oort building. Again, the Lorentz Center have all the info, directions and timetables on their webpages to help you get around. More bus timetables and travel info can be found here.

There is also the option of renting a bike from the Lorentz Center. This is by far the best way of getting around Leiden and its surroundings, as it’s flat as a pancake and bike rules the roads in the Netherlands. But bring gloves and wet weather gear!

Accommodation

The Lorentz Center will take care of hotel bookings at the Bastion Hotel, which is within walking distance from the Center (see the above map). If you want to look at other options, they can help you with that too so feel free to contact them at the address provided in the email confirmation you’ve received. A listing is provided here.

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

We certainly don’t intend for the week to be all hard work and no play – and Leiden is a great place for relaxing, having a little party, or having a big party – whichever you prefer. On Monday we will have a wine & cheese party at the Lorenz Center. This is usually an occasion to which the rest of the astronomy department, who are located in the same building, are also invited, to give everyone the chance to meet and mingle.

On Wednesday we’ll be having a conference dinner at Scheltema, in an old converted factory in the old town in Leiden. It’s a fabulous location that we’re excited to check out. We’re still finalising the arrangements for this and we’ll be back with info as soon as all is known.

The map above has a selection of local bars and restaurants with some local knowledge to help you make a selection.

Leiden is also connected throughout the night to Amsterdam’s Central Station.

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.Astronomy is a young and growing community and the 2009 conference is being generously supported by the following organisations:

>> ASTRON

>> British Council

>> Lorentz Center

>> NWO

>> RadioNet

The main purpose of the sponsorship is to enable young people to participate, who do not have access to funds to attend this conference.
It will also enable us to acquire some hardware for the Hack Day (eg. Arduino kits) and to socialise during a week that promises to be memorable for everyone.

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[Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttfnrob/sets/72157618407149142/]

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The .Astronomy conference is featured  on the front page of the offical International Year of Astronomy webpage, as a “featured event”. As the 2nd edition of .Astronomy will take place during the IYA, from 30 November to 4 December, we expect that many of our discussions, particulaly on outreach and education, will have an IYA-tinge to them. Indeed, we thing it’s the perfect opportunity to review our experiences and ideas, and look at how the many activities can be continued beyond 2009.

Got ideas? Comment, tweet, or send us an email!

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We’re in the process of putting together a list of people who are maybe interested in attending, so if you have great ideas or you have a pet project that has .Astronomy written all over it, now’s the time to get in touch with us on poc AT dotastronomy dot com, or via twitter (@dotastronomy).

Registration isn’t open yet but you can check out the “official” workshop information page at the Lorentz Center. Places will be very limited and we expect them to fill up fast, so get in touch to stay updated. Registration will be free of charge.

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Registration is not yet open for the conference. When it begins we will announce it here and on our Twitter feed, along with more details. If you would like to be alerted when registration opens please email us on registration@dotastronomy.com.

For general enquiries, please send us mail on info@dotastronomy.com.

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Over the coming days and weeks, the .Astronomy Conference Archive will begin to fill up. There are a handful of talks available already and more will be added each day.

Each talk that was given as the conference, including the video talks, are available. You can download the presentation slides and watch the video of the talk. Eventually you will also be able to read the conference proceedings with illustrations.

In the spirit of transparency, it has been decided to open the doors to the archive before it is a completed product. As such if you spot any errors or issues then please get in touch and we will correct them. If you are a speaker and would like to make any corrections/amendments, drop me a line using the contact form or via email.

Have fun watching the talks and learning more about networked astronomy and the new media.

Link: .Astronomy Conference Archive

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All good things must come to an end. The conference is now over, but in some ways this is the start of other things. The conference proceedings are now going to be written and compiled into a book. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this book in the coming weeks and months on this website. You will be able to purchase it here and to discuss it here.

Over the next few weeks the video from each of the talks will go up here as an archive of the conference. When the proceedings are written, they too will be placed here along with the videos, to enable fuller understanding and discussions. Finally when the book is available, you will be able to purchase it, either personally or on behalf of an institution.

As the organiser, thoroughly enjoyed .Astronomy and would like to thank all those of you that took part. The speakers, poster presenters, attendees and those who watched live via the web too.

For now I am off to struggle with UStream’s non-open source audio codec (grr) and to attempt to crash the market price of a telescope or two by disparaging its worth to other astronomers.

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You can watch us this week as the conference progresses in many ways. We are on Ustream, Twitter and YouTube.

Twitter is integrated into the site in the sidebar of the homepage, but if you want to Tweet  a question to us then simply include the text ‘@dotastronomy’ in your message on Twitter.

YouTube videos are going up during the event, but may be delayed. Not all talks are available via YouTube due to technological constraints.

Ustream will be broadcasting our talks live, for the most part. Talks being given via video are not being broadcast but will appear on YouTube later on.

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