The Messenger 113
September 2003

Deep Infrared Surveys and their Cosmological Implications

A. Franceschini[1], S. Berta[1], G. Rodighiero[1], D. Elbaz[2], D. Rigopoulou[3], H. Aussel[4], C.J. Cesarsky[5, D. Fadda[6], H. Flores[7], M. Rowan-Robinson[8], M. Vaccari[1]

[1] Dipartimento di Astronomia, Padova, Italy;
[2] Service d'Astrophysique/CEA, Saclay, France;
[3] Max Planck Institute fuer Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching bei Muenchen, Germany;
[4] Institute for Astronomy, Hawaii, USA;
[5] European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany;
[6] Caltech, SIRTF Science Center, USA;
[7] GEPI, Observatoire de Paris Meudon, France;
[8] ICSTM, Astrophysics Group, London, U. K.

Abstract Since the recent discovery by the COBE mission of a Cosmic Background in the Infrared containing roughly half of the global cosmic radiative budget, one of the important th emes in cosmology has been the detection and characterization of its sources. We report here on the first attempts in this sense carried out through deep mid- and far -IR surveys with the Infrared Space Observatory, and we detail on the observational ca mpaigns of optical follow-up using various ESO telescopes. This resulted in the identi fication of a population of luminous and ultra-luminous massive star-forming galaxies, strongly evolving in cosmic time. These results set the scene for the forthcoming dee per explorations using the SIRTF observatory and the latest generation of ESO instrume nts.

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The Messenger 113September 2003

Deep Infrared Surveys and their Cosmological Implications

A. Franceschini[1], S. Berta[1], G. Rodighiero[1], D. Elbaz[2], D. Rigopoulou[3], H. Aussel[4], C.J. Cesarsky[5, D. Fadda[6], H. Flores[7], M. Rowan-Robinson[8], M. Vaccari[1]

The Messenger 113
September 2003