texas a&m university astronomer jonelle walsh doesnt sugar-coat things regarding sciences understanding of the mysterious cosmic phenomenon known as supermassive black holes dr jonelle walsh theres simply a lot we dont know walsh said with emphasis on the a lot part walsh however is not one to shy away from a challenge as a texas a&m mitchell institute postdoctoral fellow in astronomy whos only six years removed from receiving her phd at the university of california irvine in 2011 she is the principal investigator of a 30-member international collaboration not to mention the only representative from texas a&m that is examining the correlation between supermassive black holes and the galaxies in which they exist walshs study is part of the gemini observatorys large and long program which grants extra observation hours to high-impact projects according to the gemini observatorys official website the extended observation period is intended to provide a greater flexibility for research and promote collaborations across the partnerships communities walsh and her team are conducting their research at the 81-meter gemini north telescope situated near the summit of mauna kea in hilo hawaii where they have been allocated 253 observing hours over the next three years our gemini large and long program is aimed at trying to understand the connection between black holes and galaxies by studying a wide variety of galaxies walsh said currently the easiest galaxies to observe and model have been studied but they are not representative of the nearby galaxy population therefore our understanding of the interplay between black holes and their host galaxies and our interpretation of how they grow and evolve together could be biased i think theres a real niche here for gemini to be able to make an impact on the field of supermassive black holes im just really excited about it i think we can do some really interesting science and there is a lot to learn before joining the george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy in fall 2014 walsh spent three years as a national science foundation astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellow at the university of texas at austin her research focuses on measuring the masses of black holes via stellar and gas-dynamical methods using high-performance computing resources and observations from high angular resolution facilities including the gemini and keck telescopes the hubble space telescope and the atacama large millimeter/submillimeter array jonelle walsh working to solve the mysteries of the universe while observing at the gemini north hilo base facilitys control room (credit: gemini observatory) supermassive black holes are the largest type of black hole like the more common stellar-mass black holes supermassive black holes have existed since the infancy of the universe some 800 million years after the big bang their gravitational pull is so powerful not even light can escape stellar-mass black holes are believed to form when the center of an immense star collapses upon itself at the end of its life and compresses into an incredibly dense matter supermassive black holes on the other hand contain between a million and a billion times more mass and are found at the center of almost every known galaxy how these galactic behemoths were able to get so huge so relatively soon after the formation of the universe is a question that has stumped scientists for decades walsh says that based on previous studies the size of supermassive black holes seems to be interdependent on the galaxy in which it resides suggesting that they somehow grow together there is a chicken and egg problem walsh said did the black hole come first and the galaxy grew around it or did the galaxy come first and a black hole formed at the center or maybe somehow both objects formed together and have been growing in lock-step with one another over time thats one of the questions im interested in eventually answering walshs group plans to observe the black holes of 30 different galaxies during the next three years by measuring the speed and motion of nearby orbiting stars the team can construct dynamical models in order to infer the mass of each black hole its a two-step process that fittingly begins in texas specifically with the telescopes at the university of texas at austin mcdonald observatory which walsh uses to analyze the outer galaxy parts once that phase is complete she looks to the gemini north telescope and similar 8-to-10-meter-class telescopes to measure the inner parts where the so-called sphere of influence of the black hole is european southern observatory image of a nearby galaxy centaurus a (ngc 5128) that hosts a supermassive black hole while walshs team isnt targeting this particular galaxy which has already been studied they are observing similar galaxies (credit: eso) an integral feature of the gemini north telescope that walshs team will be taking advantage of is its altitude conjugate adaptive optics for infrared (altair) system which is capable of correcting image distortions caused by the earths atmosphere to produce high-resolution data the gemini observations are really important for probing the innermost regions of galaxies walsh said we can obtain very sharp images; its almost like observing from space because gemini is also a very large telescope it allows us to collect a lot of light at the same time so that we can target objects that are pretty faint despite the fact that her large and long project is in the early stages walsh predicts the quality and sheer volume of data they obtain at the end of three years will require several more years of analysis were really pushing the boundaries of what we can do observationally and with the modeling walsh said at the end of three years hopefully we can have a more complete census of the local black holes we just want to gain a more fundamental understanding of how black hole masses and galaxies are connected for more information about walshs study addressing a bias in the relation between galaxies and their central black holes visit http://wwwgeminiedu/node/12610 learn more about walsh and her research as well as texas a&m astronomy research group # # # # # # # # # # about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery including that of science and technology research conducted at texas a&m represented annual expenditures of more than $8927 million in fiscal year 2016 texas a&m ranked in the top 20 of the national science foundations higher education research and development survey (2015) based on expenditures of more than $8666 million in fiscal year 2015 texas a&ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit http://researchtamuedu -atm- contact: chris jarvis (979) 845-7246 or cjarvis@sciencetamuedu or dr jonelle walsh (979) 845-7778 or walsh@physicstamuedu