Publications | CV | Teaching

I am an assistant professor in the Physics & Astronomy Department at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. 

Research Interests:

I primarily work on nuclear star clusters and their associated black holes.  Nuclear star clusters, like the one shown above, are massive collections of stars found at the centers of most spiral and elliptical galaxies.

My research focuses on the following questions:

1. 1)How do nuclear star clusters form?
   

I’m currently surveying the nearest nuclear star clusters using a wide range of observations, including laser-guide star adaptive optics observations.  These observations provide information on the morphology, kinematics and stellar populations of the nuclear star clusters.  Although much remains to be learned, my observations show that nuclear star clusters are complex systems that form episodically.

2. 2)How are nuclear star clusters and black holes related?
   

In a paper in 2008, I have shown that nuclear star clusters and black holes (as indicated by AGN) co-exist in a wide-range of galaxies.  More recently, I have used adaptive optics measurements to try to directly measure the mass of black holes in nearby nuclear star clusters.  The figure to the right shows excited molecular gas rotating around the nuclear cluster and low mass black hole in nearby galaxy NGC 404. 

I also study the history of nearby galaxies through their resolved stars and star clusters.  I am currently leading the star cluster research portion of the PHAT survey to image 1/3rd of Andromeda in 6 filters with the Hubble Space Telescope. 

You can email me at:

FIlastname@astro.utah.edu

where the 'FIlastname' above is aseth

My personal email address is:

firstlast@gmail.com

Where the 'firstlast' is anilseth