1:00 pm ET / 10:00 am PT

Dear AGN Enthusiasts, we are looking forward to bringing the community together again for our next AGN SIG Spotlight Series on Tuesday, March 17th at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. This month our Spotlight talks will feature Dr. Dominika Krol (Center for Astrophysics) presenting AGN-driven metallicity enrichment in the ISM of Mrk 573 and Dr. Justin Kader (Univ. of California Irvine) presenting The Past, Present, and Future of a Precessing Jet-driven Outflow in a Late-type Disk Galaxy.

Our Spotlight Series highlights recent advances in AGN science, with a strong emphasis on participation from early-career researchers, and includes plenty of time for community discussion following the presentations. We hope to see you all for a great discussion next Tuesday!

Spotlight Series: Tuesday, 17 March 2026, 1pm ET / 10am PT

Zoom Registration, you will receive connection details by email after registration:

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/cosmic-origins/community/agn-sig-spotlight-series-seminar-17-march-2026

Dr. Dominika Krol (Center for Astrophysics)

AGN-driven metallicity enrichment in the ISM of Mrk 573

One of the crucial parameters characterizing the interstellar medium (ISM) is its metallicity, which is associated with the chemical evolution of a galaxy’s stellar populations. However, stellar feedback is only part of the story. The extent to which active galactic nuclei (AGN) influence the chemical evolution of their hosts remains an open question. In my talk, I will present spatially resolved metallicity (log(O/H)) maps for Mrk 573, a Compton-thick AGN. By applying theoretical metallicity diagnostics tailored to AGN-driven emission to Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data, we probe the metallicity out to ~1 kpc scales, with tens-of-parsecs resolution across the ionization bicone. We find significant metallicity enhancement in AGN-dominated regions, with oxygen abundances reaching up to ~3xSolar, strongly correlated with the Seyfert/LINER Index, defined as the distance of a point from the Seyfert/LINER division line in the S-BPT diagram. Metallicity enrichment traces trace the VLA 6~cm jet/radio lobe emission. This, together with the lack of evidence for star formation in the bi-cone region, suggests that the enrichment originates from metals transported from the nuclear AGN region by winds, outflows, or jets. I will discuss the possible sources and implications of this metal enrichment.

Dr. Justin Kader (Univ. of California Irvine)

The Past, Present, and Future of a Precessing Jet-driven Outflow in a Late-type Disk Galaxy

To reproduce observed galaxy properties, cosmological simulations require that massive galaxies experience feedback from active galactic nuclei, which regulates star formation within those galaxies. However, the energetics and timescales of these feedback processes are poorly constrained. We combine optical, infrared, sub-millimeter and radio observations of the active galaxy VV 340a, hosting a low-power jet launched from a supermassive black hole at its center. We find that the jet undergoes precession, with a period of 820,000 years, and drives an outflow of gas at a rate of 20 solar masses per year. The jet shocks the gas, producing highly ionized plasma extending several kiloparsecs from the nucleus. The outflow ejects sufficient gas from the galaxy to influence its future star formation rate.