The ALMA View of Evolved Stars

Paper i proceeding, 2015

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the largest telescope of its kind, providing the astronomical community with high-spatial resolution, high-sensitivity images between 84 GHz and 720 GHz. During planning and construction of the array, the observatory promised to open a new window on how we observe and investigate the universe around us, and the expectations on how ALMA would affect our understanding of evolved stars were high. ALMA started operations in October 2011, and already with the first observations of an AGB star during Cycle 0, ALMA gave us a unique view of the circumstellar environment around the carbon star R Scl. I review the capabilities of ALMA during the current early science operations and the specifications for full science operations, and the implications these have for research on evolved stars.