Using Wide Area Surveys To Study The Faint Radio Sky

The idea of a joint ESO / Australia meeting on the large number of exciting new facilities that are, or will soon be, available tihne southern hemisphere arose quite naturally. In the optical and the near-infrared, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) will soon be operational. In the radio, the Australia Telescope Com pact Array is going to be upgraded to higher frequencies (20 and 100 GHz), together with an improvement in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) facil ities. Other major facilities, such as the Large Millimetre Array and the lkT are being planned. Moreover, new deep surveys are underway in the southern hemi sphere: the southern Hubble Deep Field, the ESO Imaging Survey (BIS), pan oramic deep surveys with the UK Schmidt telescope, and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) 2dF galaxy/QSO redshift survey in the optical; and the Parkes multibeam HI survey and Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) Wide Field continuum survey at radio wavelengths. With all these new facilities, important progress will be made regarding important issues such as the large scale structure of the universe, the very early universe and the associated first epoch of galaxy formation. The generation of large databases, and the oppor tunity for sensitive follow-up observations in complementary wavebands, mean that coordinated radio, infrared and optical projects in the southern hemisphere are likely to become increasingly attractive and important.

IAU Symposium 259 presents the first interdisciplinary, comprehensive review of the role of cosmic magnetic fields, involving astronomers and physicists from across the community. Offering both theoretical and observational topics ranging from Earth's habitability to the origin of the universe, this is an invaluable summary for researchers and graduate students.

The latest observations and theoretical models are combined in this clear, pedagogic textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

It is common believe that the centers of all galaxies exhibit supermassive black holes with masses ranging from millions up to billions of the mass of our Sun. By accreting surrounding matter, the luminosity of these galactic nuclei can outshine the emission of their host galaxies. If this is the case, they are called active galactic nuclei. Some of these objects eject powerful outflows composed of plasma, called jets. These jets can produce non-thermal radiation which observable across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio up to the gamma-ray frequencies. At highest frequencies (TeV range) most of the detected active galaxies have jets directed along or close to the line of sight. However, also galaxies with larger angles to the line of sight showing fascinating features were discovered, in seeming contradiction to traditional models for these so-called radio galaxies. Thus, the latter are of particular importance for understanding active galactic nuclei in general. This Special Issue contains reviews and research articles about the current knowledge of radio galaxies at TeV energies, including observational results and theoretical models. It is intended to guide the interested reader deeper into this fascinating discipline of modern day astronomy.

The high-redshift galaxies became a distinct research ?eld during the ?nal decade of the20thcentury. AtthattimetheLyman-breaktechniquemadeitpossibletoidentify signi?cant samples of such objects, and the new generation of 8 to 10-m telescopes resulted in ?rst good spectroscopic data. Today the high-redshift galaxies have developed into one of the important topics of astrophysics, accounting for about 5–10% of the publications in the major scienti?c journals devoted to astronomy. Because high-redshift galaxies is a rapidly developing ?eld and since new results are published constantly, writing a book on this topic is challenging. On the other hand, in view of the large amount of individual results now in the literature, and in view of the still growing interest in this topic, it appears worthwhile to summarize and evaluate the available data and to provide an introduction for those who wish to enter this ?eld, or who, for various reasons, might be interested in its results. The end of the ?rst decade of the 21st century appears to be a good point in time to attempt such a summary. The current generation of ground-based 8 to 10-m - optical telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the most important large radio telescopes have by now been in operation since about one or two decades. Although these instruments will continue to produce important scienti?c results for some time to come, many of the initial programs exploiting their unique new possibilities have been completed.