I just got back from a terrific meeting in Santa Fe on the subject of the neutron star crust, and attended by a wide range of nuclear theorists and experimentalists as well as astrophysicists. There were many interesting talks, and I learned a lot; one of the overarching themes was the need for better communication between the various groups — Bob Rutledge was remarkably persistent in asking after almost every talk, "what one thing would you like the other groups represented here to take away from your work?" (to paraphrase a little). The meeting was also one of the most "wired" that I have been to, with a blog including twitter updates, and culminating in the creation of a reddit group called neutronstarstructure to collect relevant papers on the subject.
I gave a talk on some of the recent work I've been doing with determining neutron star redshifts and mass, radius from mixed H/He thermonuclear bursts, which prompted quite a response.

Defining the Neutron Star Crust: X-ray Bursts, Superbursts and Giant Flares
Measuring neutron star parameters from mixed H/He thermonuclear bursts (3.2 MB PPT or 1.5 MB PDF)

Labels: 2009, thermonuclear bursts