Daily Image
21-06-2018
Colloquium - Active Galaxies in the local Universe
| Submitter: | Rebecca McElroy |
| Description: | This talk aims to investigate three important phenomena in the study of active galactic nuclei: how AGN are triggered, how they vary throughout their lifetimes, and how they can effect their host galaxies through feedback. We search for evidence of triggering by mergers using MUSE-VLT data from the Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS). We compare stellar kinematics of our active galaxies and a comparison sample of inactive galaxies to measure the deviation from disk like rotation. We show that the AGN have a slight enhancement in large scale asymmetry. Many AGN are known to vary strongly throughout their lifetime. We observed known changing look AGN Mrk 1018 as part of CARS and found that the broad lines and continuum emission had dramatically changed for a second time. We attempt to explain the possible causes for this recent change, and discuss what such short timescale variability means for theories of AGN feedback. Finally, we show that outflows are prevalent in luminous local type 2 AGN using multiple component Gaussian emission line modelling to disentangle the kinematic and ionisation properties of emission lines. This allows us to show that shock-like emission is present in these galaxies, demonstrating that the outflows are directly impacting the surrounding ISM within the galaxies. The image shows a combined Stripe 82 image of changing look active galaxy Mrk 1018. |
| Copyright: | Colloquium |
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