This award supports continuation of work begun under a Small Grant for Exploratory Research. The heart of the work is the utilization of an important new astronomical instrument, a spectropolarimeter at the Palomar five meter telescope, to study the nuclei of active galaxies. The use of polarimetry enables one to infer properties of the central object of such systems, even when they are obscured by intervening dust in the parent galaxy. This instrument was designed, built, and will be operated by the group that has led the way in the study of apparent superluminal motion in some of these objects.
