The 40th "Saas-Fee Advanced Course" of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA) will be held from Sunday, 14 March to Saturday, 20 March 2010 in Les Diablerets, in the Swiss Alps. This course has taken place annually since 1971, sponsored every year by the Swiss Academy of Sciences. It will be devoted to:

The Course will review the state of knowledge, open questions and forecasts in the field of high and very-high energy gamma-ray astrophysics, a field that has encountered a revolution in the last years with the success of Cherenkov Astronomy and more recently with the launch of NASA's Fermi mission. Impact of gamma-ray observations on our knowledge of particle acceleration in galactic and extragalactic sources will be reviewed. Prospects for dark matter detection and from the multi-messengers approaches will be covered as well.

The current and planned instruments will soon detect thousands of very-high energy sources and hopefully solve the question of the cosmic rays origin. The topics covered by the 40th Saas-Fee Course will allow to present to students and researchers the physics at play and will encourage the participants to become users of Fermi, Cherenkov telescope arrays and multi-messenger detectors.

The lectures will be given in English by three top experts in the field. These are:

• Prof. Felix Aharonian (DIAS, Dublin & MPIK, Heidelberg)
• Prof. Lars Bergström (Stockholm University)
• Dr Charles Dermer (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)

The lectures will be held in the morning and in the late afternoon leaving free time for informal discussions, studies, and outdoor activities (skiing) in the afternoons.

The course is intended mainly for post graduate astronomers and physicists who wish to broaden their knowledge about very-high energy astrophysics.

Organizers: Roland Walter (ISDC), Felicitas Pauss (ETHZ & CERN) and Marc Türler (ISDC)

Publication: The lecture book will be published by Springer-Verlag in its Saas-Fee series.

Contact: e-mail

Sponsors:		Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA)
		Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP)
		Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT)
		ISDC Data Centre for Astrophysics