Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies

A large part of my research focuses on supermassive black holes in the centers of nearby galaxies. (A "supermassive" black hole is one that has a mass of at least 1 million times that of the Sun.) These are found in the centers of nearly all massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and have strong relations between their mass (which can be as large as ten billion times the mass of the Sun, or even a bit larger) and several properties of their host galaxies.

My research involves finding and measuring the masses of central black holes in nearby galaxies, and then trying to figure out how the black holes are related to the galaxies.