The Nuclear to Global Connection: a Detailed View of Compact Stellar Nuclei in a Complete Sample of Virgo Ellipticals

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Scientific paper

Recent HST observations have unveiled the presence of compact stellar nuclei in a large fraction of galaxies across the entire Hubble sequence. These nuclei may be the low-mass analogues of the supermassive black holes found in bright galaxies, and part of the wider class of central massive objects believed to exist in virtually every galaxy. Understanding the history of gas accretion, star formation, and chemical enrichment of compact stellar nuclei has thus emerged as key to the study of galactic cores and gaining further insight into the overall galactic structure. Despite this, there have been no spectroscopic studies of the stellar populations of nuclei in early-type galaxies to date, due to the difficulty of observing compact { 0.1 arcsec} nuclei projected against a bright galaxy background. HST is the only telescope capable of rectifying this. Accordingly, we propose to capitalize on the exceptional spatial resolution of STIS to obtain spectra of a complete sample of 11 nuclei in early-type galaxies located in the nearby Virgo cluster. These spectra will be fully leveraged using HST IR, optical, and UV imaging already in hand to measure the masses and provide the most complete picture currently possible of the history of star formation and chemical enrichment of these surprisingly commonplace objects. This window into the nature of nuclei is crucial to our understanding of how processes in the innermost regions can reflect and impact galaxies as a whole.;

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