Friday, March 6, 2009, 12:00 noon, Phillips Auditorium
Nuclear Star Clusters: Formation and Relation to Black Holes
Dr. Anil Seth (CfA)
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Nuclear star clusters are found at the centers of most lower mass spiral
and dwarf elliptical galaxies. They have similar sizes to globular
clusters, but are orders of magnitude more luminous and massive. Recent
studies have shown that nuclear star cluster masses scale with galaxy or
bulge mass in the same way as supermassive black holes, and thus seem
connected to the overall evolution of their host galaxy. I will focus
on what we can learn about the formation of nuclear star clusters using
the morphology, populations and kinematics of nearby nuclear star clusters.
Using a variety of data, including adaptive-optics-corrected integral
field unit spectroscopy, we find that nuclear star clusters appear to
form episodically from material accreted onto the nucleus from the
surrounding galaxy. This data will also enable us to constrain the mass
of any massive black holes present in these low-mass galaxies. I will
also discuss results from a study of galaxies that have both nuclear
star clusters and AGN.
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