Mark Hughes

University of Hertfordshire

What lies at the centre of a spiral galaxy? Over the past year we have observed the centres of 54 spiral galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope in an attempt to measure the central mass concentrations. Do all spiral galaxies harbour a massive black hole? In this talk I will review the different techniques for detecting massive black holes and present some of the early results from our programme. I will also discuss the relationship between massive black hole and host galaxy and the role that we hope the AAT will play in our research programme.