Almudena Prieto Escudero

Dates of the visit: 15/01/2015 to 18/04/2015.
Research line: Formation and Evolution of Galaxies
Institution visited: Max-Planck Institute fuer Extreterrestriche Physik (MPE), in Garching and Munchen Universitatssternwarte (LMU), in Munchen,   (Germany).

Dr. Prieto collaborates with Prof. A. Buckert, Prof. K. Dolag, Dr. M. Schartmann at MPE &LMU, and with Dr. X. Mazzalay at MPE on accretion processes in the centre of the nearest galaxies.

Dr. Prieto is a staff researcher at the IAC.

A. Prieto is the research leader of the group PARSEC (Parsec scale studies of centre of galaxies accross the electromagnetc spectrum, http://research.iac.es/proyecto/parsec/main/index.php ) and the IAC principal investigator of FRIDA (Adaptive optics assisted IR integral-field spectrograph for GTC, http://research.iac.es/proyecto/frida/ ). Her major research interests are active and passive galactic nuclei, accretion processes in the nearest extragalactic black holes, star formation in the black hole radius of influence and high angular resolution techniques in astronomy.

The purpose of this stay is twofold: 1) to use our direct observations  of accretion phenomena in the centre of the nearest galaxies to constrain AGN feedback in the galaxy formation models  by the CAST group; 2) in view  of the current exciting observations in the centre of our Milky Way, showing how matter is approaching the centre, Sgr A*,   and the  compelling modeling of these observations by the CAST group, it is our purpose to  extrapolate Sgr A* scenario   to our observations of equivalent phenomena in the centre of the nearest galaxies.