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Nuclear Star Clusters (Nuclei) in Spirals and Connection to Supermassive Black Holes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2006

Roeland P. van der Marel ,
Joern Rossa ,
Carl Jakob Walcher ,
Torsten Boeker ,
Luis C. Ho ,
Hans-Walter Rix  and
Joseph C. Shields
Roeland P. van der Marel
Affiliation:
STScI, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
Joern Rossa
Affiliation:
Dept. of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
Carl Jakob Walcher
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, F-13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France
Torsten Boeker
Affiliation:
European Space Agency, Department RSSD, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Luis C. Ho
Affiliation:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
Hans-Walter Rix
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Joseph C. Shields
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, USA
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Abstract

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HST observations have revealed that compact sources exist at the centers of many, maybe even most, galaxies across the Hubble sequence. These sources are called “nuclei” or also “nuclear star clusters” (NCs), given that their structural properties and position in the fundamental plane are similar to those of globular clusters. Interest in NCs increased recently due to the independent and contemporaneous finding of three groups (Rossa et al. for spiral galaxies; Wehner & Harris for dE galaxies; and Côté et al. for elliptical galaxies) that NC masses obey similar scaling relationships with host galaxy properties as do supermassive black holes. Here we summarize the results of our group on NCs in spiral galaxies. We discuss the implications for our understanding of the formation and evolution of NCs and their possible connection to supermassive black holes.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 2 , Symposium S241: Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies , December 2006 , pp. 475 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

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