05 February 2004
05 February 2004
Speaker: Claire Max (UC Santa Cruz, Lawrence Livermore National Lab.)
Nearby active galactic nuclei seen via adaptive optics at the Keck Telescope
In recent years it has become increasingly clear that mergers between galaxies
play a critical role in galaxy evolution, in the formation of central
and in the phenomena of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasar activity. The
advent of adaptive optics on the new generation of 6-10 m telescopes
is making it
possible to study nearby AGNs and merging galaxies with spatial resolutions of
10 - 100 pc. In this talk I will describe and discuss observations of NGC 6240
and Cygnus A, archetypes of merging disk galaxies and of powerful radiogalaxies
respectively. I will make use of infrared observations using the adaptive
optics system on the 10-m Keck Telescope, as well as visible-light observations
from the Hubble Space Telescope.
References for students:
Review article: Carilli, C. L. and Barthel, P. D., "Cygnus A,"
Astron. Astrophys. Rev., 7, 1 (1996)
Young, Andrew J.; Wilson, Andrew S.; Terashima, Yuichi; Arnaud,
Keith A.; Smith, David A.,
"A Chandra XRAY Study of CygnusA. II. The Nucleus," Astrophysical
Journal, 564, 176 (2002)
Komossa, S.; Burwitz, V.; Hasinger, G.; Predehl, P.; Kaastra, J.
S.; Ikebe, Y., "Discovery of
a Binary Active Galactic Nucleus in the Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxy
NGC6240 Using Chandra,"
Astrophysical Journal, 582, L15 (2003)
J. Gerssen, R. P. van der Marel, D. Axon, J. C. Mihos, L.
Hernquist, J. E. Barnes,
"Hubble Space Telescope Observations of NGC 6240: a Case Study of an
Infrared Galaxy with Obscured Activity, " astro-ph/0310029