Carlos Gutierrez de la Cruz

Dates of the visit: 03/03/2014 to 02/06/2014.

Research line: Formation and Evolution of Galaxies

Institution visited: University of Toronto and University of York (Toronto, Canada).

Dr. Gutierrez collaborated with Prof. D. S. Moon, at the Univ. Toronto and Prof. Marshall McCall, at the Univ. York. Some resultshave been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Currently Dr. Gutierrez is a staff researcher at the IAC.

Dr. Gutierrez visited the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, during March and April 2014, where he collaborated with Dr. D. S. Moon on the analysis of optical counterparts of Ultra Luminous X-ray sources. The nature of these objects is unknown, although there is some evidence that some of them could represent the presence of black holes with mases >100 solar masses. One of the objects studied is one of the brightest and most distant ULXs known so far. The analysis of the optical counterpart (published in Gutierrez & Moon 2014) revelead the presence of the characteristic high excitation HeII (4689 A) line; this indicates that the nebulae is being ionized by the X-ray source. The other optical counterparts now under analysis include one associated to a stellar super cluster in the antennae galaxies. A collaborative project to observe more objects in 10 m telescopes is underway.

In May 2014, Dr. Gutierrez was working at Department of Physics and Astronomy of York University where he has established contacts with several groups and in particular with the group leaded by Prof. Mc Call in order to participate in a program to investigate the relevance of the structure known as Local Sheet (McCall 2014, MNRAS, 440, 405) in the framework of large structure formation.