Title:

The SAURON PROJECT
Reading the fossil record of galaxy formation

Tim deZeeuw
Sterrewacht Leiden
The Netherlands



Abstract:


SAURON is a panoramic integral-field spectrograph on the 4.2m William
Herschel Telescope on La Palma, custom-built for measuring the stellar
and gaseous kinematics and the line-strength distributions of nearby
early-type galaxies and spiral bulges. These provide the intrinsic
shape of the galaxies, their orbital structure, the mass-to-light
ratio as a function of radius, the frequency of kinematically
decoupled cores and masses of nuclear black holes and the relation
between orbital structure and the age and metallicity of the stellar
populations. The talk will give an overview of the project, and
present results.