Gas and Stars in Galaxies - Rational

Scientific Rationale

This conference aims to bring together the optical/near-IR and submm/radio communities working on 3-dimensional extragalactic data. The aim is to have a mainly science-driven conference, centered on both gas and stars in and around galaxies in all stages of their evolution.

The optical/near-IR community now has access to an increasing number of powerful Integral Field Units (IFUs) and the second generation VLT instruments as well as the proposed E-ELT instruments will all have IFU units. Future space-based instruments will also provide 3D information in the mid-IR domain. These instruments will thus provide large data cubes sampling the stellar populations and the hot ionized gas.

Radio and millimeter interferometers have provided 3D information on gas in galaxies for decades. ALMA will - by design - always provide high spatial and spectral resolution data cubes of the cold gas, allowing to trace the molecular and dust distribution in galaxies. Future radio facilities will extend current studies of neutral hydrogen out to cosmological distances and will provide information on the cool gas in and around galaxies.

To foster an active research environment for the future it is important to have a good interchange between the communities. Combining the stellar, hot and cold gas dynamics provides an unprecedented opportunity to study many processes involved in galaxy formation such as infall, outflows, mergers and AGN-related phenomena.

For this workshop we are inviting contributions that present results based on state-of-the-art 3D techniques and (or) combine information from the different wavelength domains.

A secondary goal of this conference is for the different communities to learn about the tools used to analyze and visualize 3-dimensional data, and to understand how they can be combined in the most optimal ways.

We envisage a highly interactive meeting and aim to achieve a balance between the presentation of scientific results based on current technology, and an investigation into the exciting possibilities of future technologies.