The Active X-Ray Sky

The conference on Active X-Ray Sky was held approximately two years after the launch of the Rossi-Xte and RXTE satellites. The objective of these proceedings was to incorporate results not only from these two missions, but to review recent developments about the Active X-ray Sky as obtained from the four currectly active X-ray missions, as well as from the Copton Gamma-ray Observatory.Some of the very dramatic findings were: the discovery of X-ray and optical afterglow in Gamma Ray Bursts; the discovery of X-ray oscillations at kilohertz frequencies from binary systems and the discovery of correlated IR flares, radio flares and X-ray dip-flare cycles in microquasars. These results have yielded dramatic new insights into our physical universe. Other important results reported or reviewed here include the detection of extreme high-energy emission in the active binary stars Algol and UX Ari, resonant absorption scattering from the Perseus Cluster, and cyclotron lines from pulsars. These and many other recent and important results are published here, resulting in a state-of-art review by experts currently active in the field.