Scientific Motivations

Deep, blank field far-IR to millimeter wavelength surveys are of great interest for the study of the formation of stars, galaxies, and cosmic structure. The prime importance of ground-based 0.87 and 1.2 mm surveys will remain high for the next three to five years, a timescale set by the results of satellite and balloon-borne surveys with SIRTF and BLAST, respectively. These instruments are expected to produce deep mid-IR surveys revealing thousands of sources in the near and distant universe. Complementary ground-based maps of the SIRTF and BLAST ``deep fields'', e.g., will provide the necessary long-wavelength photometry to characterize the nature, and constrain the redshifts of the sources found.