The Structure of Early-Type Galaxies from the ACS Virgo and Fornax
Cluster Surveys: Cores, Stellar Nuclei and Supermassive Black Holes.
Laura Ferrarese (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics)
A total of 143 early-type members of the Virgo and Fornax clusters have
been observed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble
Space Telescope as part of the ACS Virgo and Fornax Cluster Surveys. The
surveys and their extensions consist of ACS/WFC multicolor imaging,
supplemented by spectroscopy and/or additional imaging from WFPC2,
NICMOS, Chandra, Spitzer, Gemini, Keck, KPNO, CTIO and CFHT. In this
talk I shall review findings from the surveys that are relevant to the
formation and evolution of galactic spheroids across the Hubble sequence
and galactic luminosity function, including the properties of globular
cluster systems, central and global surface brightness profiles, and
central massive objects.
In the last part of the talk I will briefly present the natural
successor to the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey: the Next Generation Virgo
Cluster Survey (NGVS), a large CFHT program that will survey the Virgo
cluster, from its core to virial radius, to unprecedented depths, in
five filters. A description of the NGVS can be found on the project website:
http://www.astrosci.ca/NGVS/