The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) has recently conducted an extragalactic submillimetric survey of the Chandra Deep Field South region of unprecedented size, depth, and angular resolution in three wavebands centered at 250, 350, and 500 µm. BLAST wavelengths are chosen to study the Cosmic Infrared Background near its peak at 200 µm. We find that most of the CIB at these wavelengths is contributed by galaxies detected at 24 µm by the MIPS instrument on Spitzer, and that the source counts distribution shows a population with strongly evolving density and luminosity. These results anticipate what can be expected from the surveys that will be conducted with the SPIRE instrument on the Herschel space observatory.

A clear understanding of both the differences and similarities between the host galaxies of the three main classes of powerful active galaxy – radio-quiet quasars (RQQs), radio-loud quasars (RLQs) and radio galaxies (RGs) – is vital in any attempt to unify or relate the various manifestations of the AGN phenomenon. The unification of RLQs and RGs via orientation effects requires that the hosts of the two types be derived from the same population of galaxies. Meanwhile, the correlation between radio power and host morphology in nearby AGN, with radio-quiet objects (Seyferts) occurring in disc systems and radio-loud sources in ellipticals, is generally assumed to persist at higher redshifts and nuclear luminosities. However, in both cases the evidence remains ambiguous and, moreover, many previous studies have been based on poorly selected samples.

A comparison of the centimetre to submillimetre continuum spectra of 22 BL Lacertae objects and 24 flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQ) has been conducted in order to search for systematic differences between the two classes. The same overall spectral shape is found for all sources and it is concluded that the same basic physical model applies to the continuum emission over this frequency range in both cases. There is clear evidence, however, for the BL Lacs to have flatter high frequency spectra and this difference is reconciled with an intrinsic difference in the underlying jets of the two classes.

There are now well established classes of X-ray emitting galaxies, which exhibit characteristic ranges of luminosity, for example Green et al. (1992). The ROSAT all sky survey, has detected a relatively small number of galaxies whose overall properties do not appear consistent with any of these classes. We discuss whether these X-ray luminous galaxies (XLGs) are the extreme end of the luminosity range of starburst galaxies, or whether they represent a new X-ray class of AGN.