The nuclear regions of local active galaxies
Rachel Mason
The small-scale (< few tens of pc) characteristics of active galaxies form an important part of our picture of the growth of black holes and their effects on their host galaxies. In this talk I will review current ideas about one of the main components of an AGN, the dusty torus. I will discuss its possible roles in both inflow to and outflow from the nucleus, and present a search for the H3+ molecular ion that could be an unusual tracer of the kinematics of the material that makes up the bulk of the torus. I will also talk about AGN that aren't supposed to have a torus: very low-luminosity objects in which the accretion flow and its surroundings are expected to be very different from those of "conventional" AGN. Finally, I will briefly show new near-IR spectra of 50 nearby galaxies that we are using to address issues from stellar populations to the stellar initial mass function, and which we have made available to the community.