P o S(NIC XIII)124 Time-of-flight Mass Measurement of Neutron-rich Nuclei

Astrophysical calculations often require accurate masses of exotic nuclei. In many cases nuclear masses are critical in obtaining a reliable understanding of observational data. The time-of-flight method provides a way to measure the masses of nuclei far from the valley of beta stability with sufficient precision to address questions of stellar nucleosynthesis and nuclear structure in general. Recently such a time-of-flight experiment has been performed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) where significant progress has been made on the neutron-rich side of stability in the argon to iron region. We expect to make advances in understanding nuclear structure in the region and nucleosynthesis occurring in accreted neutron star crusts. XIII Nuclei in the Cosmos