Active galaxies: supermassive black holes and variability

by Margrethe Wold (Inst. for Theor. Astrophys., Univ. of Oslo)

Friday 19 Oct 2007, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

We have seen significant progress over the last few years in the understanding of active galactic nuclei (AGN). From being peculiar objects in the Universe that were catalogued and classified for several decades, we are now at the stage where we believe we understand the basic mechanisms of AGN, namely that of accretion of matter onto a supermassive black hole. There is now a general consensus that black hole activity is an integral part of galaxy formation and that it has important consequences for e.g. starformation in the host galaxy. I will review some of the recent progress in the field, and describe work that we are doing to determine black hole masses and variability properties of AGN, both which are important for understanding the role of AGN activity in galaxy formation and the physics of the accretion process itself.