Cambridge University Press' upcoming book will almost certainly be a must for anyone interested in white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. In the meantime, here is the table of contents with links to preprint articles on arXiv.org

1. Accreting Neutron Stars and Black Holes: A Decade of Discoveries by D. Psaltis
2. A review of rapid X-ray variability in X-ray binaries by M. van der Klis
3. New Views of Thermonuclear Bursts by T. Strohmayer and L. Bildsten
4. Black Hole Binaries by J. E. McClintock and R. A. Remillard
5. Optical, ultraviolet and infrared observations of X-ray binaries by P.A. Charles and M.J. Coe
6. Fast X-ray transients and X-ray flashes by J. Heise and J. in 't Zand
7. Isolated neutron stars by V. Kaspi, M. Roberts and A. Harding
8. Globular Cluster X-ray Sources by F. Verbunt and W.H.G. Lewin
9. Jets from X-ray binaries by R. Fender
10. X-Rays from cataclysmic variables by E. Kuulkers, A. Norton, A. Schwope and B. Warner
11. Super soft sources by P. Kahabka
12. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources in Normal Galaxies by G. Fabbiano and N.E. White
13. Accretion in compact binaries by A. King
14. Soft gamma repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars: magnetar candidates by P. Woods and C. Thompson
15. Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts, Their Afterglows, and Their Host Galaxies by K. Hurley, R. Sari and S. G. Djorgovski
16. Formation and Evolution of Compact Stellar X-ray Sources by T. M. Tauris and E. van den Heuvel

Labels: 2005, /reference

Some notes relevant to astro-types thinking about migrating from other *nix platforms to OS X. People keep asking me about it.

The biggest advantage is avoiding dual-boot arrangements and and messing around with partitions etc., but still having access to commercial packages such as Microsoft Office (as well as iTunes of course!)
Astronomical data analysis packages that have been ported to OS X (not by any means complete):

• HEAsoft comprising the FTools and XANADU packages for X-ray data analysis (RXTE, ASCA etc.)
• CIAO for Chandra data analysis
• SAS v6.1.0 for XMM-Newton data analysis
• IRAF, a general purpose system for the reduction and analysis of astronomical data (see the dedicated maciraf page)
• Karma, a "toolkit for interprocess communications, authentication, encryption, graphics display, user interface and manipulating the Karma network data structure".

Packages that have NOT as yet been ported (completely)

• MIRIAD

Other essential packages:

• Fink for GNU tool ports (including xv, the Gimp, tetex etc.)
• XonX, XFree86 on OS X (forget the Apple version)
• OroborOSX allows you to interleave Aqua (OS X) and X windows
• CodeTek Virtual Desktop offers a trial version (although this is a bit redundant now that Exposé is a part of OS X)

As for security, by default, OS X won't allow any connections from outside, unless you explicitly allow them. There is built-in firewall, and encryption of folder contents (FileVault) if you want either of those. As well there aren't all the nasty viruses and crap for Mac at the moment that there are for Windows (although that may change in the future if Apple significantly increases market share!)

Labels: 2004, /reference