4th June 2020

Dear IAUS361 participants,

Everyone on the SOC and LOC for IAU Symposium 361: “Massive Stars Near and Far” very much regrets that we had to postpone the Symposium, which would have taken place two weeks ago. Given the way things have developed over the past three months, it is obvious that we took the right decision and it is also clear that re-scheduling for later this year is not feasible. We would like to thank all of you in the community very much for your support, patience and understanding as we went through the process of postponing the conference.

We have settled on 3-7 May 2021 for the re-scheduled Symposium, with a similar format to what was planned for May 2020. We hope that as many of you as possible can come to the 2021 meeting!

We plan to also re-schedule the Massive Stars Summer School, probably in the week before the Symposium. The school was nearly 3 times oversubscribed, so we will consider whether we can make organisational changes to accommodate more participants.

The fairest solution for the allocation of talks seems to be that the decisions of the SOC for the invited and contributed talks remain the same for the re-scheduled meeting. The SOC will contact speakers during Autumn when registration is open again and, in case of withdrawals, a limited call for contributed talk abstracts will be issued in due time.

If you were allocated an IAU travel grant for the 2020 symposium, then you will again be offered a grant for the rescheduled symposium, albeit the exact level of support may change slightly. New offers will be issued by the IAU, probably in January 2021, once we have contacted all of the grantees and ascertained their intentions for the 2021 meeting.

Thank you all very much for your patience as we have refunded the registration fees over the past few weeks. All refunds of fees for the 2020 Symposium should now be completed (the last ones about 10 days ago). If you have a query about your refund please contact Ronan Byrne, the DIAS finance officer, quoting your “Order Confirmation Number” and putting “IAU Symposium 361” as part of the subject line.

Finally, the LOC would like to congratulate Anne Grace on her recent retirement, and thank her for her efficiency, effectiveness, and the huge amount of work she did over the past year for the Symposium.

We will be in touch again with news and updates after the summer break.

Best regards,
The LOC and SOC of IAU Symposium 361: Massive Stars Near and Far