Conference Rationale
At present there are several major international initiatives to build large
ground- and space-based telescopes which will change the landscape of
observational astrophysics dramatically and open up new horizons in almost
every branch of astrophysics. New facilities, such as ALMA, Herschel/Planck,
and SKA in the far infrared to radio band, OWL, JWST and GAIA in the optical to
near infrared regime, XEUS and CONSTELATION-X in the X-ray, and GLAST in
the Gamma-ray regime, will become the corner stones of astrophysical research
in the 21st century. These new facilities will play leading roles in
observational astronomy and are expected to make major impacts on a large
number of scientific topics, including the cosmological epoch of reionisation,
galactic dynamics and nuclear activity, stellar astronomy, extra-solar
planets, gamma-ray bursts, X-ray binaries, and many others.
Since all the new facilities will address several of these scientific
problems, the synergy, coordination and complementarity between them should
be explored early on. The
meeting in Berlin has provided a forum for exchange of information and
building ties among the future facilities and generating novel research
ideas which span the different spectral bands.
Scientific Program
The meeting program was based on invited reviews and invited
presentations. A limited number of contributed talks and posters was
accommodated in the program. The conference was opened by reviews
of future facilities in the radio, millimeter, infrared, optical, and
high-energy bands and in the gravitational wave astrophysics.
The facility reviews were followed by discussions of five major
scientific areas which will be addressed by the future
facilities:1) Cosmology and Fundamental Physics
2) High-redshift Universe, Galaxies, and Galaxy Evolution
3) AGN and Compact Objects
4) ISM and Formation and evolution of stars
5) Planets and Origins of life
Contributed talks and posters were invited for each of these subjects.
The discussion of the scientific topics outlined above continued within four working groups. The working group sessions were be run in parallel in the afterooon, on the third conference day. The conference was concluded with summaries of the working group discussions and a plenary session.