Radio Galaxies: Past, present and future

We are organizing a workshop of around 60 people to assess the current position that radio galaxies

hold in astrophysics and what should be the aims for the future of this field.

There have been major advances made in the way we look at radio galaxies in the past 5 years. Possibly

the most notable of these is the strong evidence which suggests that powerful radio galaxies are extremely

good probes of large scale structure in the young Universe. The recent discovery of ~20 Lyman alpha

emitters around a z=4.1 radio galaxy is testament to this and has opened the doorway to detecting significant

overdensities of galaxies when the Universe was < 10% of its present age. There has also been huge

developments in the field of black-hole demographics and the physical processes occurring with the central

kpc, consequently, we are now entering into an era where we may be able answer the question of what

makes an AGN radio loud. The results coming from both XMM-Newton and Chandra are also providing

new and exciting insights into the AGN itself and the surrounding hot gas.

These investigations have enhanced the profile of radio galaxies in a cosmological context while the more

traditional aspects of radio galaxy research such as determining the ionising mechanisms involved in

producing the extended line emission and the star formation history of the host have also been retained

and enhanced. Therefore, we are now in a position where a review of past work and current ideas is

needed along with a look forward into the future use of radio galaxies as cosmological probes and also

as test cases to investigate the physical processes which occur in and around these extreme objects.

Organizing committee:

G.K. Miley  miley@strw.leidenuniv.nl

M. Jarvis  Jarvis@strw.leidenuniv.nl

H. Röttgering  rottgeri@strw.leidenuniv.nl