Day 163

Saturday, Christmas Eve.  Since Tuesday, the day my parents arrived (at 11pm on Dec. 20th), I have: (1) scratched the Avis car, drove to and back from Düsseldorf, (2) shopped at IKEA with Mom and Dad with said car, (3) returned car and paid 850 Euro for the scratch, then went to Siegburg Christmas market, then to Bonn Christmas market, (4) called Alice O2 to describe my Internet connection problem, then went to Köln Christmas market, then Bonn's again, (5) and today had a panic about losing my green shoulder bag with my passport inside, where it was it my closet all along, and afterwards going to IKEA again to return some unused stuff, and buy some more stuff.  Most of the time I was in a bad mood, yelling at Mom (sorry Mom).  

1112.3668

M94 as a unique testbed for BH mass estimates and AGN activity at low luminosities

Constantin, Seth

Nucleus of M94: broad Ha emission measurements is unambiguously associated with the high-resolution X-ray, radio, and variable UV sources detected at the optical nucleus of this galaxy. Suggest that it is one of the least luminous broad-line (type-1) LINERs.  SMBH mass estimates based on kinematics (~7e6 Msun) agrees with fundamental plane and M-sigma relation, but is discrepant from "other accretion based estimate" (M-FWHM(Ha) relation, BH mass with highly-ionized mid IR emission lines, and X-ray excess variance), which give much lower estimates (1e5 Msun).  AGN in this system may be deficient in ionizing radiation relative to the observed emission-line activity, possibly due to source variability or the superposition of multiple sources including SNe.

1112.3683

The BOSS emission-line lens survey (BELLS). I.  A large spectroscopically selected sample of lens galaxies at redshift ~ 0.5

Bolton, Schlegel, Eisenstein, Kochanek, Connolly, ... et al

Same detection method as SLACS, 25 definite and 11 probable SL gravitational lens systems by galaxies.  SIS ellipsoid model parameters of definite lenses.  From 6 month data; more from the full 5-year BOSS data set (~100s), can constrain the z evolution of structure of elliptical, bulge-dominated galaxies as a function of luminosity, SM, and rest-frame color, providing test for galaxy formation and evolution.