SPECIAL SESSION 3: ESO Special Session: ALMA Early Science - opportunities and tutorials

The ESO program comprises three main priorities: scientific operations and development of the VLT and the VLTI, complete the construction and start the scientific operations of ALMA in collaboration with North American and East Asian partners, complete the design for the European Extremely Large Telescope. With the achievement of closure phase at the high site, by the end of January ALMA will start the Commissioning and Science Verification phase. If no major setbacks are encountered in the coming year, we do expect to release a call for Early Science proposals towards the end of 2010. It is thus time for the future European users to prepare themselves for the first ALMA observations.

In this session we will present an overview of the whole ESO program, then focus on ALMA with a presentation of the current status of construction, the ALMA development plan and its opportunities, and the European ALMA Regional Centre plans for user support in preparation and during Early Science. The session will include demonstration of the ALMA software that will be used to apply for ALMA time, prepare ALMA observations, interact with the ALMA archive and reduce the ALMA data.

Session 1:

ALMA Status   --  W. Wild - 30min
ALMA Science   --   J. Afonso  - 20min
CASA tutorial   --   P. Klaassen - 20min
<Q&A session>  --  Is my science doable with ALMA? (prepared questions from audience)


Session 2:

ALMA Early Science  --  L. Testi - 20min
ALMA support for European users (the ARC)  --  M. Zwaan - 20min
Observing Tool tutorial  --  E. van Kampen - 20min
<Q&A session>  --  Is this a sensible program for ES? Which tools would I need? Are they available?

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