The COMPASS experiment at CERN

The COMPASS experiment at the CERN SPS has a broad physics program focused on the study of the spin structure of the nucleon and on hadron spectroscopy. Key measurements for the spin program are the gluon contribution to the spin of the nucleon, flavor dependent quark spin distribution, and the measurement of the transverse spin structure function. The apparatus consists of a two-stage spectrometer designed for high data rates and equipped with high-resolution tracking, particle identification, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimetry. Data taking has started in 2002. Following the CERN SPS shut down in 2005, the experiment will resume data taking in 2006 and is planned to continue (at least) until 2010. Few hundreds of Terabytes of data are put on tape each year. Out of this large amount of data first important physics results have been obtained.