Program: GN-2020B-FT-111

Title:Density diagnostics of outflows in MR 2251-178
PI:Jon Miller
Co-I(s): Hermine Landt, Jerry Kriss, Junjie Mao, Mike Brotherton, Missagh Mehdipour

Abstract

Outflows driven by AGN provide an attractive solution to the observed scaling relationships between black holes and their host galaxies. Quantifying the impact of AGN outflows on the host galaxy is crucial to address the major astrophysical question: how do galaxies evolve. The main gap in our understanding is the location of the outflow, which can be derived if we can precisely measure its density. We have recently been awarded a long observation with Chandra LETGS (320 ks) to measure the outflow density in MR 2251-178 using metastable absorption lines. Here we propose to obtain a near-IR spectrum to observe also the metastable He I absorption lines (at 1.08 and 2.06 microns). The X-ray observations are scheduled for 2020 September 1 to September 11, which makes this FT round ideal to obtain the near-IR spectrum contemporaneously (within a few months) with them.

Publications using this program's data