CAREER: The Highest and Lowest- Mass Black Holes in the Nuclei of Nearby Galaxies

加州大学欧文分校（University of California, Irvine）的亚伦·巴特（Aaron Barth）博士将负责一个项目，为黑洞质量与宿主星系速度色散之间的关系以及超大质量黑洞的质量函数提供新的约束条件。这项工作将包括两个互补的研究领域。黑洞质量的动态测量将对附近最大的星系进行，以提供黑洞质量函数上端（大于109个太阳质量）的新约束。另一个研究领域涉及对质量低于106个太阳质量的黑洞的星系群的研究，包括对这些物体中黑洞质量的新测量和确定其宿主星系结构的新观测。巴特博士还将致力于扩大和加强加州大学欧文分校的本科天体物理学项目，并提出一项将研究培训纳入课程的新倡议。他将为大三或大四的本科生共同创建和教授一门新的本科观测天文学实验课程。目标是给学生一个动手介绍的研究方法，并准备他们承担高级论文工作和暑期研究项目在观测天文学。作为新实验课程开发的主要部分，Barth博士将为他的天文图像查看和分析软件添加新的功能，该软件是用IDL图像处理语言编写的。这款名为ATV的软件在过去六年里已经在万维网上免费提供，广泛用于世界各地大学和天文台的教育和研究环境中天文图像的交互式显示和分析。

Dr. Aaron Barth at the University of California, Irvine, will undertake a program to provide new constraints on the correlation between black hole mass and host galaxy velocity dispersion, and on the mass function of supermassive black holes. The work will incorporate two complementary areas for research. Dynamical measurements of black hole masses will be performed for the most massive nearby galaxies, to provide new constraints on the upper end of the black hole mass function (above 109 solar masses). The other research area involves a study of the population of galaxies with black holes having masses below 106 solar masses, including new measurements of the black hole masses in these objects and new observations to determine the structure of their host galaxies. Dr. Barth will also undertake efforts targeted toward the expansion and enhancement of the undergraduate astrophysics program at UC Irvine, with a new initiative to integrate research training into the curriculum. He will co-create and teach a new undergraduate observational astronomy laboratory course for junior or senior-level undergraduates. The goal is to give students a hands-on introduction to research methods and prepare them to undertake senior thesis work and summer research projects in observational astronomy. As a major part of the development of the new lab course, Dr. Barth will add new capabilities to his astronomical image viewing and analysis software, written in the IDL image-processing language. This software, called ATV, has been freely available on the World Wide Web for the past six years and is widely used for interactive display and analysis of astronomical images in both educational and research environments at universities and observatories worldwide.