Super-massive black holes: how do they impact galaxy growth?

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 18th November 2021 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Virtual Meeting

At the heart of almost every massive galaxy, there is a super-massive black hole. We see evidence in astronomical observations that these super-massive black holes are linked to the global properties of the galaxies in which they reside. One of the biggest open questions in astronomy today is: how do super-massive black holes impact galaxy evolution? Recently we released high-resolution radio images of galaxies with super-massive black holes. But what do these images tell us? And how are these black holes impacting the galaxies they live in? In this talk, I will review recent results and the technical advances that made them possible, with a focus on the PhD contributions to this ongoing, internationally collaborative project.

Speaker: Dr. Leah Morabito

Born in the United States, Leah spent six years in the US Air Force before earning her Ph.D. from Leiden University in 2016. Subsequently, Leah was a Hintze Fellow at the University of Oxford, before becoming an Assistant Professor at Durham University. Leah Morabito is a radio astronomer and world-leading expert in high-resolution imaging with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR). She investigates how active supermassive black holes in distant galaxies impact the growth of their host galaxies, using specialized data processing techniques she developed for LOFAR to achieve the highest resolution images at low radio frequencies. As a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, Leah will use these techniques to conduct the first-ever high-resolution radio survey and zoom in on the radio emission from tens of thousands of galaxies, to quantify the feedback between super-massive black hole activity and the growth of stars.