The First Year of ALMA Science

Attendees at The First Year of ALMA Science conference in Puerto Varas, Chile. Photo courtesy Valeria Foncea (JAO).Nearly 200 astronomers converged on Puerto Varas, Chile 12-15 December 2012 for a conference titled The First Year of ALMA Science that discussed the many cutting-edge results emerging from ALMA data. The conference Science Organizing Committee, chaired by Leonardo Testi, crafted a program that demonstrated the breadth of ALMA’s impact on astrophysics and featured major oral presentation sessions on the evolution of galaxies, the interstellar medium and star formation, the high-redshift Universe, solar system and protoplanetary disks, the local Universe, stellar evolution, and the future of ALMA science. Twice-daily poster sessions proved lively and helped maximize the conference’s scientific impact. Ryohei Kawabe and Al Wootten chaired a discussion session on the future of ALMA development and science on the final afternoon, and Neal Evans wrapped up the conference with an excellent summary of the many presentations and posters. Though the conference focused on ALMA observational results, it also included presentations and discussions on related theory, as well as relevant complementary data from the VLA, VLBA, GBT, Herschel, CARMA, SMA, and IRAM.

The conference presentations will soon be available at the conference website, and an electronic conference proceedings volume will be available in 2013. Many of the scientific results from this conference have been, or will soon be, published in the literature.

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