To Build an Elliptical Galaxy

Seminar Date:

Monday, Jan 20th, 2014 

Speaker:
Dr. Jenny Greene
Princeton University

Title:
To Build an Elliptical Galaxy

I discuss two essential aspects of elliptical galaxy formation: how they get their stars, and how they lose their gas. For the former, I use integral-field observations of local massive galaxies to study the stellar populations and kinematics of stars at large radius, to understand the origin of the size growth of elliptical galaxies. 

Then I focus on black hole feedback as a means of clearing gas from massive galaxies. I show that luminous obscured quasars have ubiquitous, round ionized outflows with very high gas dispersions of nearly 1000 km/s out to 20 kpc. 

Finally, if time permits I will combine these two themes and present our recent search for sub-pc supermassive black hole binaries.