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Supermassive Black Holes

Measuring Supermassive Black Holes and the Hubble Constant with H2O Megamasers

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Astronomy
Location
134 Astronomy Building
Virtual
wifi event
Date
Apr 30, 2024   3:45 - 4:45 pm  
Speaker
Jim Braatz
Contact
Daniel Franco
E-Mail
danielf9@illinois.edu
Phone
217-300-6769
Views
31
Originating Calendar
Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar

Observations of water vapor megamaser emission from the nuclei of nearby active galaxies provide a unique and valuable tool for investigating the structure and dynamics of molecular gas on sub-parsec scales.  Megamasers enable gold-standard measurements of the masses of black holes in the nuclei of these active galaxies, and in some galaxies enable a geometric determination of the distance to the megamaser system, thereby providing a measurement of the Hubble Constant.  In this talk I will describe progress on these fronts made by the Megamaser Cosmology Project, as well as recent efforts to extend studies of water megamasers from the well-studied 22 GHz transition into sub-millimeter wavelengths using ALMA.

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