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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2017
The study of galaxy evolution with large lookback times is dominated by two difficult issues. The first is a technical matter. Even the most luminous galaxies are faint (mr < 19) at significant lookback times (z ≳ 0.5), and so spectrophotometric observations of average galaxies challenge our present telescope and detector technology. The second issue is the selection of objects in an unbiased way in order to assemble a representative sample of galaxies at the remote epoch. It is far too easy to chase only exotic objects whose very peculiarity has brought them to our attention. Though observations of such objects may be fascinating and revealing, they may tell us little about the evolution of an typical galaxy like our own.