Nearly every large galaxy appears to host a supermassive black hole in its nucleus, with a mass ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. The origin of these black holes is still not understood, but rare, intermediate-mass black holes may shed light on the problem. Measuring the mass of a nuclear black hole requires significant telescope resources, so a method of identifying a few probable candidates is necessary. Patrick Treuthardt will discuss an efficient means of identifying spiral galaxies that potentially harbor intermediate-mass black holes with the help of citizen scientists, all-sky surveys and existing scaling relations.

Treuthardt's talk is part of the Coffee and Viz series. The series allows NC State researchers to share their visualization work and discuss topics of interest.