A large fraction of the staff of the Observatory is involved in surveys of extragalactic objects. Some of these surveys are ongoing long-term projects, but quite a few have started only recently, or will start in the near future, and will require telescope time with new generation optical telescopes like the VLT.
As an aid to observational cosmologists de Ruiter has made available (on the WEB) a collection of cosmological formulas. For a number of models (the standard Friedmann model, flat models with non-zero cosmological constant, and some more exotic ones) distances, volumes and look-back times are given as a function of redshift. In many cases the solutions are given in analytical form. The compendium can be found on the WEB2.