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JOINT DAUT-ICTP-OATS-SISSA COLLOQUIUM
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Speaker:
Tim de Zeeuw (ESO, Munich)
Title:
The SAURON Survey
Date: Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Time: 16:00
Venue: Villa Bazzoni
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Abstract:
Much world-wide effort is devoted to the study of the formation and
evolution of galaxies, ranging from observations of the most distant
objects in the early Universe to detailed analysis of the motions of
individual stars in the Milky Way, combined with theoretical work and
numerical simulations. Developments in optical instrumentation make it
possible to measure the motions and physical properties of stellar
populations in nearby galaxies, and to determine the properties of the
supermassive black holes in their centres. A representative survey of
nearby early-type galaxies and spiral bulges with SAURON, a panoramic
integral-field spectrograph custom-built for the UK/NL/E 4.2m William
Herschel Telescope on La Palma, reveals a fascinating diversity of
properties. The stellar and gaseous kinematics and the line-strength
distributions provide the intrinsic shape of the galaxies, their
orbital structure, the mass-to-light ratio as a function of radius,
the frequency and structure of kinematically decoupled cores, the
masses of nuclear black holes, and the relation between orbital
structure and the age and metallicity of the stellar populations. This
'fossil record' gives key insight into the galaxy formation process.
The talk will summarize recent results of the SAURON survey, and
briefly discuss the next steps.
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contact: Andrea Biviano (OATS)