The winter workshop on planetary astrophysics will be held at the newly founded Kavli Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics in Peking University (KIAA-PKU) during Dec 12-19, 2009. The aims of the meeting are: 1) to establish international collaborations in this rapidly advancing field; 2) to stimulate the emergence of a planetary astrophysics community in China as well as east asia.

The size of the workshop will be kept modest (40 or so faculty plus comparable number of postdocs and students) to encourage interactions. Outstanding issues in planetary astrophysics will be discussed, including protoplanetary disks, formation of planets, planet-disk interactions, tidal interactions between planets and stars, planetary atmosphere, cosmochemistry, organization of planetary systems and debris disks.

The first day of the workshop (Saturday Dec. 12th) is designed specifically for beginning researchers. An overview of the entire subject will be presented, followed by a crash course on dynamics (including fluid mechanics and n-body dynamics). This preparatory session will familiarize beginning researchers to the terminology and physical processes oftenly invoked in the area of planetary astrophysics.

The following 7 days (Dec 13th - 19th) will each contain a morning session and an afternoon session, with each session consisting of one pedagogical review talk and a few research talks, by researchers across the globe on a specific area of planetary astrophysics. Many tea breaks and themed discussions will be held to foster interactions.

The workshop is aimed to be both a high-level scientific forum as well as a founding conference for the field of planetary astrophysics in east asia. One of the focus is to expose top students and young researchers from around east asia to this exciting research area. As such, students from across all disciplines are encouraged to register, and if they are travelling from outside the Beijing area, their local costs will be covered by KIAA.

KIAA-PKU promotes basic research in China with the highest international standards and carries out research on astronomy and astrophysics. The KIAA buildings in the traditional Chinese architectural style is located inside the beautiful area of the university campus, Langrunyuan near Weimin Lake which was a part of the Old Summer Palace. The campus of Peking University at the side of Yuanmingyuan (the Summer Palace) is located in the Northwest part of Beijing city and is only about 20 minutes walking distance from the Summer Palace and only about 50 minutes from the Great Wall by car. With the brand-new #4 subway line, it is very convinient to go from the university campus to the Forbidden City , the Tiananmen Square and other famous landmarks. The capital airport is also within easy reach.

Sponsored by:

Kavli Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, National Science Foundation of China

SOC & LOC:

Doug Lin (KIAA-PKU, UCSC), Yanqin Wu (KIAA-PKU, Toronto), Jilin Zhou (Nanjing), Tinggui Wang (USTC), Gang Zhao (NAOC), Weimin Yaun (Yunan), Ning Zhang (KIAA-PKU)

Invited reviews

Frank Shu (UC/ASIAA)
Hubert Klahr (MPIA)
Typhoon Lee (ASIAA)
Qingzhu Yin (UC Davis)
Willy Kley (Tuebingen)
Shigeru Ida (Tokyo)
Eiichiro Kokubo (NAO Japan)
Norm Murray (Toronto)
Eugene Chiang (Berkeley)
Jilin Zhou (Nanjing)
Adam Showman (Arizona)
Doug Lin (KIAA/UC Santa Cruz)
Jian Ge (Florida)