The incidence and properties of present-day dwarf galaxies hosting massive black holes (BHs) can provide important constraints on the origin of high-redshift BH seeds. Here we present high-resolution X-ray and radio observations of the low-metallicity, star-forming, dwarf-galaxy system Mrk 709 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). These data reveal spatially coincident hard X-ray and radio point sources with luminosities suggesting the presence of an accreting massive BH (M BH ∼ 10 5−7 M ⊙). Based on imaging from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)

We have obtained two-dimensional velocity fields in the ionized gas of a set of eight double-barred galaxies, at high spatial and spectral resolution, using their Hα emission fields measured with a scanning Fabry-Perot spectrometer. Using the technique by which phase reversals in the non-circular motion indicate a radius of corotation, taking advantage of the high angular and velocity resolution we have obtained the corotation radii and the pattern speeds of both the major bar and the small central bar in each of the galaxies; there are few such measurements in the literature. Our results

Happy New Year 2014 from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

With the Canaricam instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), a team of researchers known as ‘Los Piratas’ have caught a system of two galaxies fused together in collision, feeding two black holes at their centres

Astronomers at the IAC have discovered complex patterns of resonances in the discs of spiral galaxies not previously described by theories. Using the GHaFaS 2dimensional spectrometer they have measured the velocities of the density waves in the discs of over a hundred galaxies Within the discs of spiral galaxies there are waves which propagate concentrically in the form of spirals. This is somewhat similar to the waves on the surface of a lake, or the standing waves on the strings of a violin, or on the surface of a drum, to use a musical metaphor. These are the so-called “density waves”

NASA: The Geminids from the Canaries, astronomical image of the day We receive a message from an asteroid in the guise of a meteor shower