Hervé Dole , Guilaine Lagache , Richard Gispert , Jean-Loup Puget , & the FIRBACK consortium
1 Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France
We present the FIRBACK survey, one of the deepest cosmological
survey ever performed at 175 
with the ISOPHOT instrument,
and its context : the study of the cosmic far infrared background.
FIRBACK consists of two surveys at high Galactic latitude, and covers
a total surface of about 3 square degrees.
We describe the complex data processing, and show the final maps. We detect a large amount of sources, which may be a new population of high redshift, dust-enshrouded star-forming galaxies (detailed results will be discussed by Lagache et al in the following presentation). Obtaining identifications and redshifts for these objects is clearly a priority.
To constrain the properties of the detected sources, and to remove cirrus contribution, we began a large follow-up observation program at other wavelengths from optical to radio ranges; we already have performed in the southern field 90 microns observations on some sources with ISO, and 1.4 GHz and HI observations at the Australia Telescope Compact Array on the whole field.
Latest results and images are available at our URL :
http://nova.ias.fr/firback/