The Origin of Galaxies: Lessons from the Distant Universe

Two years ago a meeting was held to prepare observing with three major new facilities that are providing European astronomers with data in the sub-mm and far-IR wavebands: the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO), SCUBA-2 on the renewed James Clark Maxwell
Telescope (JCMT), and part of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA).
The meeting was focused on the science topic of the origin of galaxies, which benefits especially from data taken using these new telescopes. We also discussed how these results will relate to data taken at other wavelengths.
Late 2009 the first data should have been taken, so December 2009 is the right time to provide a platform to present the first science results. The aim of this conference is to bring together many of the European astronomers that have been planning these observations and those that have been improving and extending their galaxy formation models to include sub-mm and far-IR predictions at high redshift. As non-Europeans will have been active as well during this time, we aim to have a sizable fraction of the participants coming from outside of Europe in order to compare results and discuss the consequences for galaxy formation models in the light of all data obtained, including the wealth of multi-wavelengthdata that is being gathered using a wide range of instruments, from GALEX to Spitzer, and from APEX to the GBT.
Sessions will focus on
• Galaxy formation and evolution: theoretical context
• Galaxies from z=0 to z=6
• The ultra high-z universe
• AGN & feedback
• Long wavelength
• Long wavelength surveys
• Line emission sub-mm astrophysics
• Discussion on best strategies for follow-up observations in the various wavebands