Authors
                Dr.
            
                        Nancy Levenson
            
  Date and time
                                    20 Oct 2008 - 00:00 Europe/London
                            Address
                                    Aula
Talk language
                                    English
                            Serie number
                                    0
                            Description
                                    The great energy source of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) may be the accreting supermassive black holes of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or intense concentrations of star formation. While dust obscuration and reprocessing erases the nature of the hidden sources themselves, mid-infrared observations do effectively probe the dust and its distribution in galactic nuclei. Emphasizing spectroscopy obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, I will reveal the environments of deeply buried ULIRGs and AGNs, showing that the "torus" of unified AGN schemes is characteristically clumpy and small.