Lessons from our Nearest Galaxy Nucleus

Omega Centauri is the most massive star cluster in the Milky Way, and there is strong evidence it was once the nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that fell into the Milky Way, making it the nearest galaxy nucleus. This makes it a model object for understanding the massive black holes and dense nuclear star clusters that form in galaxy centers. This talk will focus on recent results from the oMEGACat survey, including the strong evidence for an intermediate mass black hole and our effort to measure its mass updated mass estimates. I will also discuss our comprehensive census of stellar age and helium abundances, and the first detection of one of the roughly 10,000 stellar mass black holes expected to reside in the cluster.

Speaker: Anil Seth, University of Utah