Astronomy Colloquium

  New kinematic data and modeling efforts in the past few years have substantially expanded and revised dynamical measurements of black hole masses  at the centers of nearby galaxies.  I will describe an ongoing project to measure some of the most massive black holes in giant elliptical galaxies  using 10 meter class telescopes, integral field spectrographs, and adaptive optics.  I will present updated scaling relations between the black hole mass and host galaxy properties such as the stellar velocity dispersion and bulge mass, and discuss the implications of these correlations for the formation and evolution of massive galaxies.