Instructions for Astronomy Colloquium Speakers

Background | Accommodation | Finding Us | Travel from Airport | Miscellanea | Contact

Background Information

Formal departmental colloquia are held on Fridays at 2 PM. All talks are approximately 1 hour long, including discussion and questions. Each talk is followed by refreshments in the Astronomy & Astrophysics lounge on the 2nd floor. The speaker schedule is available online. The visit usually includes morning coffee with the department (10:30 AM), lunch with faculty and postdocs, and speaker's dinner, hosted by the graduate students, at a local restaurant. Some speakers will wish to attend the CITA dessert Friday at 4pm, in the 14th floor lounge of McLennan Labs (MP). Please see our schedule of events for other happenings.

Accommodation

We will book your accommodation for you. Our usual hotel is the Holiday Inn Toronto Midtown (280 Bloor Street West, telephone 416-968-0010). It is within walking distance of the department. On the interactive campus map, it is roughly at the yellow arrow in the box with legenda on the top.

The usual visitor's office is AB 224. See Gautam Patel in the Astronomy office for keys.

Finding us on Campus

The Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics is located in the 3-story building at 50 St. George Street at Russell St (marked by AB in the lower left quadrant of the interactive map or at the red A in this Google map). You can enter from either St. George side or Russell side. The main office is located in AB 101, on the 1st floor.

Some Department members, and CITA, are located in McLennan Physical Labs, a tall tower at Huron & Russell (technically 60 St. George), denoted MP in the campus map.

Transport from Pearson Airport

To get to the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics from the airport, one can either use public transport or a taxi. Colloquium speakers should feel free to take a taxi or limousine!

• Bus to Subway Take the 192 Airport Rocket to Kipling subway station. It runs between 5:37 AM (8:17 AM on Sunday) and about 2 AM with a frequency of 20 minutes in the morning and every 10 in the afternoon and evening. It stops in all terminals (arrivals level in terminal 3, to the far left as you exit; one floor below arrival [ground level] in terminal 1; see the airport rocket site). The bus will bring you to a courtyard inside Kipling station; no transfer is required. Enter the station, go downstairs and take the subway 15 stops to St George station. Walk South on St George Street about 0.7 km to 50 St George. (For more information, see the TTC web site.)
  Cost: $3 for the whole trip, payable upon entering the bus (no change given). Canadian $2 and $1 coins may be obtained as change in airport stores.
  Duration: about 1 hour door to door
• Taxi: Go outside the terminal to the taxi stand. Tell the driver you want to go to 50 St George Street, which is one block north of College. Get a receipt. There are two kinds of taxis: limos and taxis. Limos cost $5 more, the car is marginally more comfortable, and limo drivers wear a hat.
  Cost: about $50 flat-rate fare to downtown, plus tip.
  Duration: About 1/2 hour, except in rush hour when it can be up to twice as long.

Miscellanea

• Laptops:: It is best to bring a laptop with you; if you can't, please let your host know so that s/he may reserve one for you. Your laptop must be registered in our local network before it can be used. To register it, please send the computer's MAC address and operating system in advance to your host, and ask them to register it for you -- or send this info in an email to our system manager, Hugh Zhao (zhao@astro).
• Phones: In Toronto even local telephone calls must be prefixed by the area code 416. From phone booths, local calls are 50 cents.
• Taxi reservations: If you or a visitor has to get to the airport in a hurry, you can call a limousine from Aerofleet (416-449-4990) or a taxi (Beck Taxi 416-449-6911, Co-op Cabs 416-504-2667, Black Diamond 416-366-6868), Emerald Taxi (416-590-9000). They take reservations and the cost is about $50 plus tip. The best place to meet the taxi is "on the north side of Russell Street, halfway between St George and Huron".
• Weather: Environment Canada has forecasts for the Toronto area, which should be consulted if you're unsure whether you need to bundle up or wear shorts.
• Reimbursement: The hotel will be billed directly to the department, and you will get a per-diem for food, etc. Please keep receipts for transportation. If you come by air, please keep your boarding passes; the university finance department insists on these. In case we fail/forget to give you a reimbursement form during your visit, download either the PDF or the excel version and send it by mail to Gautam Patel, Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 50 St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada. If you lost your boarding passes (or another receipt), please fill out a declaration that you are not claiming the money anywhere else.

Contact Information

A list of people that might be useful:

• Colloquium Organizers: Prof. Mike Reid (mreid@astro; 416-948-0307; MP AB 129); Prof. Bob Abraham (abraham@astro; 416-946-7289; MP AB 206); Dr Mariangela Bonavita (bonavita@astro; 416-978-4971; AB 222.
• Graduate Administrator: Mark Goodman (goodman@astro; 416-978-6623; AB 101; for hotel reservations, abstracts, and general inquiries).
• Financial Assistant: Gautam Patel (patel@astro; 416-946-7119; AB 101D; for reimbursement)
• Computing Manager: Hugh Zhao (zhao@astro; 416-946-7286; AB 130; for registering your laptop's MAC address).

All e-mail addresses are incomplete as listed (in an attempt to reduce spam); replace @astro by @astro.utoronto.ca to get the working address.

Last updated: 29 Dec. 2008.