Seb's Research Web Page

See also my Resources page

My interests are in Observational Cosmology. I study the evolution of galaxies and also their large-scale distribution. Primarily I work with galaxies selected on the basis of the light they emit at mid and far infrared wavelengths. Some particular individual projects I work on are outlined below - mostly these are surveys and you might be interested in my Survey of Surveys

Future

I am an Associate onthe SPIRE an instrument on the ESA Herschel Mission. Together with Jamie Bock, I lead the Spire high-z Specialist Astronomy Group. We are undertaking a set of surveys. I am also the Instrument Control Centre Scientist for In particular the VIDEO survey I am an Associate Scientist for the London Planck Analysis Centre LPAC, working on the Planck-Surveyor

Current

A Legacy Survey with the Spitzer Space Telescope I am a Co-Investigator on the SWIRE: The Spitzer Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic Survey led by Carol Lonsdale at IPAC. This is the largest SIRTF Legacy progamme We have undertaken a wide-area, high-latitude imaging surveys 50 square degrees, reaching to cosmological redshifts of ~2.5. The primary science goals include the evolution of dusty, star-forming galaxies, evolved stellar populations and AGN as a function of environment. The resultant catalogs include more than 2 million infrared-selected galaxies. I am a Co-I on the UKIDSS. I am particualarly interested in the Deep Survey DXS.

  • Akari

    A Japanese mission undertaking an all-sky survey at far infrared wavelengths

Past

  • Surveys with the Infrared Space Observatory ISO

    • ELAIS: I am the Project Scientist for the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS). A project which surveyed up to 12 square degrees of the sky at 7, 15, 90, 175 µ m.
    • ISO-HDF: Our survey of the Hubble Deep Field with ISO
    • ISO-HDFS: Our survey of the Hubble Deep Field South with ISO
    • FIRBACK: Surveys (including the ELAIS fields N1 and N2) at 175µ m.

  • UK-Submm Survey Consortium

850µ m map of Hubble Deep Field
We are using The Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array SCUBA on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope to make maps in the sub-millimeter. Our first project making deep maps of the Hubble Deep Field, found a much higher star-formation rate at high redshift than expected (Hughes et al. 1998 Nature 394 241). We are currently working on a shallower 8mJy survey within the ELAIS fields.

  • X-ray Surveys

I am involved with a few deep, hard X-ray surveys on Chandra and XMM I am a member of the Science Committee for the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy VISTA.

  • Follow-up of IRAS surveys

    • A faint IRAS redshift survey. This is the redshift survey that formed my PhD work. We obtained around 3000 redshifts for galaxies selected from the IRAS Faint Source Catalogue. We have demonstrated that there is significant amount of evolution in this sample. We have also investigated the Large Scale Structure and compared the distribution of these objects with optically selected galaxies in the same area.
    • The IRAS Point Source Catalogue Redshift Survey. An all-sky redshift survey of 15000 galaxies, now complete. Scientific analysis is in progress.
    • The SPAAB project. A collaboration between myself, Pippa Goldschmidt, Bob Mann, Andy Taylor and Andy Lawrence. We have imaged 100 IRAS galaxies to test the hypothesis that star formation activity is triggered by merging or interactions between galaxies.

Astronomical & Medical Imaging Meeting 18th April 2001

Unofficial AMI meeting page

Home Page

Contact addresses and numbers

S.Oliver Sussex.ac.uk

Last updated 2nd October 2002

First Created (as a seperate page) 2nd October 2002