The Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Saint Petersburg Scientific Center of RAS, the Institute of Applied Astronomy of RAS invite you to participate in the International scientific conference «Asteroid-Comet Hazard-2009» which will be held 21-25 September 2009 in St. Petersburg.

The purposes of the conference are to provide a common forum for experts of diverse background and disciplines to come and exchange information and ideas, to recommend subsequent development of research, to attract public attention to severe hazard due to asteroids and comets approaching the Earth and necessity of more active international cooperation of the research directed to protection of civilization from this hazard.

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It is supposed to discuss the next topics:

1. Study of small bodies of the Solar system (physics, dynamics, origin and evolution of asteroids, comets, meteoroids).
2. Asteroid-comet hazard (origin and dynamic evolution of objects approaching the Earth, observations, physical properties, cataloguing, data bases, estimation of collision probability with the Earth and other bodies).
3. Collisions of cosmic bodies with the Earth (study of the traces of past catastrophes, modeling of collisions and their consequences, the threshold for global catastrophe).
4. Counteraction (discovering hazardous cosmic objects, methods and means of acting upon near-Earth objects, organization of passive and active counteracting the asteroid and comet impacts, the technologies to address the study of asteroids and comets in near-Earth space, missions to hazardous bodies).
5. International-legal aspects of counteracting the impact hazard. Collaboration of different countries in solving the problem. Dealing with mass-media.

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Phone:	(812) 275-10-15 (Nadezhda V. Shuygina)
FAX:	(812) 275-11-19
E-mail address:	(Please, in all email correspondence, use in the Subject field, 'ACH-2009')
Web-page:	www.ipa.nw.ru/conference/ach2009/

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Languages of the conference are English and Russian.

Abstracts of papers, in case they are written in Russian, should have detailed summary in English. Contributed paper can be submitted for oral presentation or as poster. Depending upon the number of papers offered, it is hoped to provide 30 minutes for invited papers and 15 minutes for contributed ones, including discussion. For oral presentation a multimedia projector will be in your disposition. Area up to 0.6 square meter will be provided for poster (9 pages of A4 format). Submitted papers are reviewed by the Program Committee and selected on the basis of their suitability for inclusion in the program. The Committee reserves the right to reject paper or to change form of its presentation. Papers will not be accepted for reading ?in absentia?. It is supposed that Proceedings of the Conference will be published soon after the end of the Conference.

Abstracts of papers must be submitted by May 15, 2009 in electronic form. For more details see Supplement 1.

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The registration fee is 3000 Rubles (approximately 120 USD or 85 EURO) for participants and 1500 Rubles for accompanying persons. It should be paid in cash while registration.

Registration fee does not include travel expenses, accommodation and other expenses of the participant.

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Information on obtaining visa and accommodation is given in Supplement 2.

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The conference will be hosted by the Institute of Applied Astronomy. Building of the Institute is situated close to historical center of St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities of the world, which celebrated three-hundredth anniversary. Numerous architectural ensembles of the city and its suburbs, bridges and embankments of Neva river and canals form inimitable in its beauty appearance of the city. World-wide known museums, first of all, Hermitage and Russian museum, possess unique collections of works of art and world masterpieces.

There are dozens theatres in St. Petersburg, including Mariinsky theatre of opera and ballet.

Participants of the conference will have opportunity to attend museums and theatres, to have excursions to palace ensembles in St. Petersburg suburbs.

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In case you have not registered as a potential participant of the Conference up to now, but, nevertheless, are considered this question, you still have possibility to register as a participant before 15th May, 2009. To do so, please fill in on-line form at

http://www.ipa.nw.ru/conference/ach2009/profile/ (preferable way)

or send file with your abstract prepared according to the rules and the following registration form to the LOC at the address:



In case you have already registered on-line, please, fill out all missing positions.

Please, fill in the following data in the form:

1) In case you are author of several papers, please enumerate them and then use these numbers in the next two points. If you are not the author, fill in «no» in the present point and skip the next two points.
2) Fill in «yes» in case you are speaker of oral paper or demonstrator of poster, otherwise fill in «no».

We are looking forward to seeing all of you here in St. Petersburg.

Organizing committee

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