UCI to lead major telescope study of black holes
January 29th, 2008, 3:00 am · Post a Comment · posted by grobbins
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UC Irvine has been chosen to lead a large and unusually long telescope study of black holes, mysterious regions in space “in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape, not even light.”
“We’re going to try to measure the masses of the black holes in the centers of about 10 galaxies,” says UCI astronomer Aaron Barth, the team’s lead investigator.
“These are galaxies where the black holes are currently growing by swallowing up a lot of gas, and we can observe this gas glowing brightly as it falls toward the black hole.
“The results from this project will help us to understand the relationship between the mass of the black hole and the mass of its host galaxy, and how giant black holes built up their huge masses over the history of the universe.”
Barth leads a team that also includes scientists from the UC campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Riverside and Santa Barbara. They were given 64 nights of observing time on the historic Shane Reflector Telescope at the Lick Observatory east of San Jose. The observation period begins in March.
Barth said: “The project requires almost continuous observations over the course of several weeks in order to monitor changes in the brightness of these objects. We’re delighted that the Observatory granted us the time to carry out the project.”
The 120-inch Shane Reflector Telescope is one of the primary instruments that scientists have used to discover or infer the presence of planets beyond our solar system.
