Dynamical evidence for black holes and dark halos

Abstract

A variety of observational approaches have provided evidence for extended halos of dark matter surrounding elliptical galaxies, and for massive dark objects in (some of) their nuclei. What are the properties of the dark halos? How do they relate to the parameters of the luminous matter? What is the demographics of massive central black holes, and what is their dynamical role in shaping the host galaxy? Recent work in this area is described, with special attention to the construction of state-of-the-art dynamical models that incorporate all available observational constraints.

10 pages including 3 postscript figures in uuencoded compressed tar file. To appear in "The Nature of Elliptical Galaxies", eds M. Arnaboldi, G. da Costa, P. Saha, ASP Conference Series, 1997, in press