Zooniverse

Abstract:

Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in "Hanny's Voorwerp," but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least two, and more likely by over four, orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insight into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

HARMONI has been conceived as a workhorse visible and near-infrared (0.47-2.45 microns) integral field spectrograph for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). It provides both seeing and diffraction limited observations at several spectral resolutions (R= 4000, 10000, 20000). HARMONI can operate with almost any flavor of AO (e.g. GLAO, LTAO, SCAO), and it is equipped with four spaxel scales (4, 10, 20 and 40 mas) thanks to which it can be optimally configured for a wide variety of science programs, from ultra-sensitive observations of point sources to highangular resolution spatially resolved studies of extended objects. In this paper we describe the expected performance of the instrument as well as its scientific potential. We show some simulated observations for a selected science program, and compare HARMONI with other ground and space based facilities, like VLT, ALMA, and JWST, commenting on their synergies and complementarities. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.