Max Claire E, Canalizo Gabriela, de Vries Willem H
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.
Science. 2007 Jun 29;316(5833):1877-80. doi: 10.1126/science.1136205. Epub 2007 May 17.
Mergers play an important role in galaxy evolution and are key to understanding the correlation between central-black hole mass and host-galaxy properties. We used the new technology of adaptive optics at the Keck II telescope to observe NGC 6240, a merger between two disk galaxies. Our high-resolution near-infrared images, combined with radio and x-ray positions, revealed the location and environment of two central supermassive black holes. Each is at the center of a rotating stellar disk, surrounded by a cloud of young star clusters. The brightest of these young clusters lie in the plane of each disk, but surprisingly are seen only on the disks' receding side.
