FLASH Talks: Detection of a 100,000 Msun black hole at the center of the most massive globular cluster in M31 & External Calibrator for Hydrogen Observatories (ECHO)
Viernes, 28 Enero 2022 mediodía — 1 p.m. MST
Tu hora:
Renuka Pechetti (Liverpool)
TItle: Detection of a 100,000 Msun black hole at the center of the most massive globular cluster in M31
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are the connection between stellar-mass black holes and super-massive black holes. Finding these black holes can help us understand the evolution of the galaxies along with their black holes. But, IMBHs are extremely difficult to find as their effect on the surrounding stars is much weaker than a super-massive black hole. Hence, they require high-resolution measurements of the nearest possible targets. While no robust measurements exist till date, the possible IMBH candidates can provide key information on the formation of the initial seeds of supermassive black holes and the origin of the galaxy--black hole scaling relations.
I will present the detection of an IMBH at the center of the most massive globular cluster (B023-G078) in the nearest galaxy M31. We derived the mass models using HST observations for the globular cluster and combined these with adaptive optics high spatial resolution kinematics derived from GEMINI/NIFS IFU observations. We then used Jeans' anisotropic modeling to combine the mass models and kinematics to measure the black hole mass. This object is likely the stripped nucleus of a dwarf galaxy and this detection is more robust than any previous IMBH detection, including those in G1 or Omega Cen.
Mrudala Gopalkrishna, ASU
FLASH Talks are scientific talks for the staff at NOIRLab and the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory.