Monster Black Holes, Active Galaxies and Red Quasars

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 24th February 2022 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Virtual Meeting

Quasars are THE brightest known objects in the visible universe. They are so bright that they outshine the entire galaxy they sit in and are useful in all areas of astronomy, especially cosmology where they can be used as a probe for the early Universe.

They are a type of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which consist of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, surrounded by an extremely bright disc of matter falling onto the black hole. Most quasars appear very blue, but there are some that show much redder colors.

These “red quasars” could be an important link in galaxy evolution and so understanding their properties is very important. In my work, I use high-resolution radio data and optical-near-infrared spectroscopy to explore the differences in red quasars, adding weight to the emerging picture of red quasars being fundamentally different objects.

I will also talk about the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) which has just started its 5-year survey to obtain the spectra of ~30 million galaxies.

Speaker: Victoria Fawcett

I am an astronomy Fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Munich where I study quasars: extremely bright galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. I am part of two major astronomy collaborations: the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), an optical spectrograph on the Mayall telescope in Arizona, and the Multi-object Optical and Near-IR spectrograph (MOONS), an infrared spectrograph soon to be installed on the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Outside of research, I am passionate about astronomy outreach and love talking to the public about space, having given many talks at schools, science festivals, museums, and astronomical societies.

Learn more about Victoria Fawcett