Mid-infrared (MIR) observations have marked a before and an after for extragalactic astronomy, both at high-redshift and in the local universe. The Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have seen through dust clouds in our galaxy and beyond and largely increased our understanding of star formation (SF) and nuclear activity in galaxies. Furthermore, upcoming facilities such as MIRI on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and METIS on the 40 m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be leading extragalactic research during the next decades. This Special Session will bring the MIR extragalactic community together to review some of the most salient observational and theoretical results on galaxy evolution of the last years, and discuss the challenges and opportunities brought by current and upcoming MIR instruments.

Ground-based 8 to 10 m class telescopes currently operating in the MIR are the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) and the Subaru Telescope. On the GTC, the MIR instrument CanariCam is fully operational, and the first scientific results are starting to come out. Even smaller spatial scales than those observable with CanariCam have been probed with the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI) on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), although restricted to bright and nearby sources. In 2016/17, the new VLTI instrument MATISSE (the Multi AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment) will offer a more efficient capability for image reconstruction.

Much higher sensitivities are obtained from space, at the cost of lower (diffraction-limited) spatial resolutions. The high sensitivity of Spitzer allowed for the first time to study the IR emission of star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) at high redshifts, and the all-sky WISE observations provided MIR photometry for a very large sample of galaxies, comparable in size to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey main galaxy sample. The launch of the JWST, planned for 2018, will represent a revolution for extragalactic astronomy, since it will combine extreme sensitivity and sub-arcsecond angular resolution. From the ground, the instrument METIS, mounted on the E-ELT, will also provide unprecedented angular resolution data. This Special Session aims to present a complete MIR view of extragalactic astronomy, focusing on interstellar dust, star formation in galaxies, (ultra-)luminous infrared galaxies and AGN.

Image: The Andromeda Galaxy observed by WISE (12-micron light has been color coded orange, and 22-micron light, red). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team.

Programme

Key recent discoveries facilitated by MIR observations that will be discussed include:
• The tight relation between MIR and bolometric emission from AGN.
• The correlation between AGN activity and nuclear to galaxy-wide star formation.
• The IR spectral energy distribution (SED) of high redshift (U)LIRGs, which unlike the mostly merger-driven local (U)LIRGs, are "normal" main sequence galaxies and have SEDs similar to those of normal star-forming galaxies in the local universe.
>> Detailed programme of Sp4 Talks / Posters
>> Access to slides of presentations

Invited speakers


• Almudena Alonso Herrero (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain)
• Bernhard Brandl (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands)
• Sebastian Hönig (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)
• Pablo Pérez González (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
• Dimitra Rigopoulou (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Scientific organisers


• Almudena Alonso-Herrero (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain)
• Poshak Gandhi (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)
• Evanthia Hatziminaoglou (European Southern Observatory, Germany)
• Antonio Hernán Caballero - co-chair (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain)
• Cristina Ramos Almeida - co-chair (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain)
• Henrik Spoon (Cornell University, USA)

Contact


• Cristina Ramos Almeida: cra @ iac.es
• Antonio Hernán Caballero: ahernan @ ifca.unican.es
Updated on Tue Jun 02 11:55:42 CEST 2015

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Select a session for display … S1: Understanding the growth of the first supermassive black holes S2: The Journey of Dwarf Galaxies S3: Deconstructing Massive Galaxy Formation S4: New Challenges in Astrophysics with Gravitational Waves S5: The Sun under the microscope S6: The Formation and Destruction of Molecular Clouds S7: Worlds within particles:
Representing supernovae and stellar populations in galaxy simulations S8: What happened to the gas? Understanding the evolution of galaxies S9: First Science From Gaia - the Gaia Research for European Astronomy Training (GREAT) Network Science … S10: Finding and identifying habitable planets and searching for signs of life: a comprehensive approach … S11: Neutron stars at the crossroads:
X-ray binaries and transitional millisecond pulsars Sp1: Timing compact objects in the multi-messenger era Sp2: Observational anomalies challenging the Lambda-CDM cosmological model Sp3: 3D view on interacting and post-interacting galaxies from clusters to voids Sp4: Galaxy studies in the mid-infrared from space and ground Sp5: AGB stars: a key ingredient in the understanding and interpretation of stellar populations Sp6: Robotic telescopes and instrumentation for time domain astronomy Sp7: Science with large spectroscopic surveys of Galactic OB stars: getting ready for Gaia Sp8: The physics of fossil stellar magnetism Sp9: The Physics behind The Radio-IR Correlation Sp10: The quest for detecting the primordial gravitational wave background Sp11: Horizontal branch stars and the UV radiation from old stellar systems: what we know and what we are … Sp12: Circumbinary Planets Sp13: Eruptions and explosions: the lives and deaths of massive stars Sp14: Low-accretion physics in the Universe Sp15: Metallicity scaling relations: insight into galaxy evolutionary processes Sp16: The outskirts of galaxies: present status and future challenges Sp17: Hunting down the elusive progenitors and explosion mechanisms of Type Ia supernovae Sp18: Chemical abundances and gradients in spatially resolved late-type Galaxies in the Local Universe Sp20: Getting ready for Gaia: 3D structure of the ISM Sp21: Science with Panchromatic Large Surveys in the SKA era Sp22: Theory and Observations of the First Galaxies Sp23: MHD-modeling of active solar structures SM1: European Interferometry Initiative (EII) Science Council meeting SM2: VLTI Community Day 2015 SM3: Science with the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS SM4: Databases for the Characterization of Astronomical Observatories SM5: Synergies between solar and night-time Adaptive Optics SM6: Reaching Diverse Audiences in Europe through Astronomy Outreach SM7: ASTRONET 2015 - 2025: The Next Decade