Galactic Nuclei Group

Welcome to the home page of the Galactic Nuclei group, led by Nadine Neumayer.

Our group studies the build-up of galactic nuclei with the goal to constrain the formation and growth of supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. In particular we aim to:

• disentangle the formation processes of nuclear star clusters found in the majority of galaxies, and
• put constraints on the presence of black holes in low mass galaxies.

For our studies we are mainly using high spatial resolution observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and adaptive optics assisted imaging and integral-field spectroscopy from the ground. The Milky Way’s nuclear star cluster serves as the perfect local benchmark object for our studies. We have put together an innovative data set that enables an extended view of the Milky Way nucleus and helps to constrain its formation processes.