Announcement

Astronomers Around the World Meet to Share ALMA Observatory First Results

First Year of ALMA Science conference concludes in Puerto Varas, Chile

17 December 2012

Astronomers from around the world have been meeting in Chile to discuss the exciting first year of scientific results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope. ALMA started Early Science operations at the end of September 2011, and the first scientific papers have recently been appearing in refereed journals.

Out of this first year of ALMA science we already have transformational results in the main ALMA science areas,” says Leonardo Testi from ESO, Chair of the Conference Scientific Organising Committee. “We now have a much better understanding of the process of planet formation around other stars. New and important results were obtained in the area of pre-biotic molecules in space, which may be linked to the origin of life. With ALMA we are starting to study in detail the chemistry of water and complex organic molecules and this is important for understanding our origins,” he added.

Two hundred astronomers from all around the world met from 12–15 December 2012 in Puerto Varas, a small, attractive town on the shore of Lake Llanquihue in Southern Chile, for the First Year of ALMA Science conference, sponsored by the ALMA partners ESO, NAOJ and NRAO, as well as the Joint ALMA Observatory, with additional support provided by CONICYT and by the EC-FP7 Radionet3 project.

The conference covered all the ALMA science topics: from observations of Solar System bodies to objects in the Milky Way, in the local Universe and all the way out to the high-redshift Universe. Presentations and discussions focused on the amazing data being collected with ALMA and included related theoretical implications and predictions as well as relevant complementary data from other major facilities.

For the first time ALMA offers the sensitivity necessary to study normal galaxies in the very distant Universe, far away in time, when the Universe was less than one billion years old (the age of the Universe is 13.7 billion years).

We are proud of the first results obtained with the subset of ALMA that is already available,” said the ALMA Director, Thijs de Graauw. “These results demonstrate clearly what ALMA will contribute to the understanding of the Universe when construction is completed at the end of 2013 and we have the full set of capabilities available for science. The discoveries discussed at this conference are already very impressive, but this is just the beginning of a new era of astronomy.

One result highlighted at the conference was the discovery of a simple sugar, glycolaldehyde, in a young analogue of the Solar System (see eso1234). This is not the same sugar as we use in our coffee — it is actually poisonous — but this molecule is one of the ingredients in the formation of RNA, one of the building blocks of life closely related to DNA.

With ALMA we are also finding protoplanetary discs around brown dwarfs, which suggests that planet formation may be more common than we thought before,” said Leonardo Testi (see eso1248).

Attendees at the conference also discussed the scientific priorities for the ALMA development programme, that will ensure ongoing upgrades of the observatory to keep it at the forefront of research into the Universe.

While many participating astronomers had some experience of the north of Chile where the main astronomical observatories such as ALMA are located, most had never been in the southern part of the country before. “They were delighted to discover the warm hospitality, exquisite cuisine and natural beauty of the region,” said Gautier Mathys, Chairman of the Local Organising Committee.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Links

Contacts

Douglas Pierce-Price

Public Information Officer, ESO

Garching bei München, Germany

Tel: +49 89 3200 6759

Email: dpiercep@eso.org

Valeria Foncea

Education and Public Outreach Officer, 

Joint ALMA Observatory

Santiago, Chile

Tel: +56 2 467 6258

Cell: +56 9 75871963
Email: vfoncea@alma.cl

Masaaki Hiramatsu

Education and Public Outreach Officer, NAOJ Chile
Observatory
Tokyo, Japan

Tel: +81 422 34 3630

E-mail: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

John Stoke 

Assistant Director - Education & Public Outreach 

National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Charlottesville VA, USA. 

Tel: +1 434 244 6896 

Email: jstoke@nrao.edu

About the Announcement

Id:ann12101

Images

Participants in the first year of ALMA science conference in Puerto Varas, Chile
Participants in the first year of ALMA science conference in Puerto Varas, Chile

Send us your comments!
Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language
Accelerated by CDN77
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Settings and Policy

Our use of Cookies

We use cookies that are essential for accessing our websites and using our services. We also use cookies to analyse, measure and improve our websites’ performance, to enable content sharing via social media and to display media content hosted on third-party platforms.

You can manage your cookie preferences and find out more by visiting 'Cookie Settings and Policy'.

ESO Cookies Policy


The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy. It carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities for astronomy.

This Cookies Policy is intended to provide clarity by outlining the cookies used on the ESO public websites, their functions, the options you have for controlling them, and the ways you can contact us for additional details.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device by websites you visit. They serve various purposes, such as remembering login credentials and preferences and enhance your browsing experience.

Categories of cookies we use

Essential cookies (always active): These cookies are strictly necessary for the proper functioning of our website. Without these cookies, the website cannot operate correctly, and certain services, such as logging in or accessing secure areas, may not be available; because they are essential for the website’s operation, they cannot be disabled.

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
csrftoken
XSRF protection token. We use this cookie to protect against cross-site request forgery attacks.
1st party
Stored
1 year
user_privacy
Your privacy choices. We use this cookie to save your privacy preferences.
1st party
Stored
6 months
_grecaptcha
We use reCAPTCHA to protect our forms against spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis. We use www.recaptcha.net instead of www.google.com in order to avoid unnecessary cookies from Google.
3rd party
Stored
6 months

Functional Cookies: These cookies enhance your browsing experience by enabling additional features and personalization, such as remembering your preferences and settings. While not strictly necessary for the website to function, they improve usability and convenience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent.

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
Settings
preferred_language
Language settings. We use this cookie to remember your preferred language settings.
1st party
Stored
1 year
ON | OFF
sessionid
ESO Shop. We use this cookie to store your session information on the ESO Shop. This is just an identifier which is used on the server in order to allow you to purchase items in our shop.
1st party
Stored
2 weeks
ON | OFF

Analytics cookies: These cookies collect information about how visitors interact with our website, such as which pages are visited most often and how users navigate the site. This data helps us improve website performance, optimize content, and enhance the user experience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent. We use the following analytics cookies.

Matomo Cookies:

This website uses Matomo (formerly Piwik), an open source software which enables the statistical analysis of website visits. Matomo uses cookies (text files) which are saved on your computer and which allow us to analyze how you use our website. The website user information generated by the cookies will only be saved on the servers of our IT Department. We use this information to analyze www.eso.org visits and to prepare reports on website activities. These data will not be disclosed to third parties.

On behalf of ESO, Matomo will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

ON | OFF

Matomo cookies settings:

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
Settings
_pk_id
Stores a unique visitor ID.
1st party
Stored
13 months
_pk_ses
Session cookie temporarily stores data for the visit.
1st party
Stored
30 minutes
_pk_ref
Stores attribution information (the referrer that brought the visitor to the website).
1st party
Stored
6 months
_pk_testcookie
Temporary cookie to check if a visitor’s browser supports cookies (set in Internet Explorer only).
1st party
Stored
Temporary cookie that expires almost immediately after being set.

Additional Third-party cookies on ESO websites: some of our pages display content from external providers, e.g. YouTube.

Such third-party services are outside of ESO control and may, at any time, change their terms of service, use of cookies, etc.

YouTube: Some videos on the ESO website are embedded from ESO’s official YouTube channel. We have enabled YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, meaning that no cookies are set unless the user actively clicks on the video to play it. Additionally, in this mode, YouTube does not store any personally identifiable cookie data for embedded video playbacks. For more details, please refer to YouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Cookies can also be classified based on the following elements.

Regarding the domain, there are:

As for their duration, cookies can be:

How to manage cookies

Cookie settings: You can modify your cookie choices for the ESO webpages at any time by clicking on the link Cookie settings at the bottom of any page.

In your browser: If you wish to delete cookies or instruct your browser to delete or block cookies by default, please visit the help pages of your browser:

Please be aware that if you delete or decline cookies, certain functionalities of our website may be not be available and your browsing experience may be affected.

You can set most browsers to prevent any cookies being placed on your device, but you may then have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site/page. And some services and functionalities may not work properly at all (e.g. profile logging-in, shop check out).

Updates to the ESO Cookies Policy

The ESO Cookies Policy may be subject to future updates, which will be made available on this page.

Additional information

For any queries related to cookies, please contact: pdprATesoDOTorg.

As ESO public webpages are managed by our Department of Communication, your questions will be dealt with the support of the said Department.