Program: GN-2008A-Q-33

NGC6240 is an infrared luminous merging system harbouring two supermassive black-holes in the nuclei of the interacting galaxies. NGC6240 represents an unique laboratory in the local Universe to study the gas and stellar dynamics in the very central regions of an early stage merger. We request the outstanding 3 hours to reach the scientific goals of our 2007A program. We use near-infrared tracers to follow the motions of the stars and gas in the most kinematically active central region of this galaxy. The high spatial and spectral resolution afforded by AO-assisted integral field spectroscopy with NIFS+ALTAIR/LGS, will allow us to investigate dynamics on a scale of a few tens of parsecs. Additionally, resolving the stellar kinematics in the immediate vicinity of the binary black-holes will permit the first measurement of their individual masses. These results will have strong implications for the M-sigma relation and hierarchical merger models of galaxy formation.