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Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto - Coordinator (Paulo Garcia)

The Centre for Astrophysics of Porto University is the top astrophysics research unit in Portugal, with 22 PhDs and 10 PhD students and the only evaluated as excellent by the national science foundation. The research themes are star formation, cosmology and stellar oscillations. The centre has a long tradition in organizing conferences and workshops. It is also the host of an European Master in Astrophysics and actively participates in the Astronomy degree of Porto University. Being located in the Porto Planetarium it has a very active public outreach unit.
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ESO, the European Southern Observatory, was created in 1962 to: "establish and operate an astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere, equipped with powerful instruments, with the aim of furthering and organising collaboration in astronomy". The ESO member states are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Negotiations with other countries are underway. ESO operates three sites in the Atacama desert in Chile. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) Observatory is located at an altitude of 2600m on Cerro Paranal, 130 km south of Antofagasta. The VLT consists of four 8.2-meter and several 1.8-meter telescopes. These telescopes are also used in combination as the VLT interferometer (VLTI). The VLTI had "First Fringes" in March 2001. The La Silla Observatory at 2.400 m altitude, consists of a series of optical telescopes with diameters up to 3.6-m, and at the ALMA observatory at 5,000 meter in the Llano de Chajnantor, a large sub-mm interferometer array (ALMA) is under development. Over 1300 proposals are made each year for the use of the ESO telescopes. The ESO Headquarters is located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. ESO has about 320 international staff in Europe and Chile, and about 160 local staff in Chile.
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Laboratoire d'Études Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA) is one of the major laboratories in Paris Observatory. The total number of staff amounts to 200 including 24 PhD students. LESIA is subdivided in 4 divisions: Astronomy, Plasma Physics, Solar Physics and Planetology. LESIA contributes to both spatial experiments (Cluster, Rosetta, Corot, �) and ground-based instruments (DENIS survey, VLT adaptive optics, VLTI). LESIA is also heavily involved in education of student astronomers, teachers and professional astronomers through the general program of Paris Observatory and astronomers of LESIA are used to organize scientific conferences and schools. LESIA is also actively involved in the Astronomical interferometry and related science Marie Curie Training Site.
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The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy is focused on the research in the fields of Stellar and Planetary Formation, Galaxies, and Cosmology. It is leading the development ofinstrumentation for earthbound and space observatories, such as the mid-infrared interferometric instrument for the VLTI (MIDI) and the beam combiner for the Large Binocular Telescope (LINC-NIRVANA). The MPIA hosts the German Center for Infrared and Optical Interferometry, which coordinates efforts by German institutions in obtaining, reducing and interpreting astronomical interferometric data.
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The Arcetri Observatory is one of the largest astronomical institutes in Italy with a staff of almost one hundred people including fifty astronomers, plus typically more than twenty international PhD students and PostDocs. Main scientific topics are Star Formation, Active Galactic Nuclei, Observational Cosmology, High Energy Astrophysics. They are part of large international collaborations and have routinely access to many telescopes like the ESO, HST, TNG (4m in La Palma, Canary Islands), IRAM and VLA. Arcetri has also a large group devoted to developing astronomical instruments and is thus involved in several important projects like the Large Binocular Telescope (the innovative two 8m class telescopes devoted to interferometric observations, a collaboration of Italy with USA and Germany), AMBER (the near-IR instrument for the ESO VLT Interferometer), ALMA (the large mm observatory which is a joint collaboration of Europe, USA and Japan) and Herschel (a far-IR / mm satellite which will be launched by the European Space Agency).
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Third parties

Together with the above institutes the schools will be organized jointly with the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, France (Fabien Malbet), the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland (Andrzej Niedzielsky) and the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Lajos Balázs).

We thank the Jean-Marie Mariotti Center (JMMC) and in particular to Gilles Duvert for support.