Nuclear clusters, bulges and massive black holes in spiral galaxies

We report on some of the recent work that has come from our Hubble Space Telescope programme to find massive black holes in nearby spiral galaxies. Determining black hole masses from gas kinematics in spiral galaxies is difficult, but results have been reported for NGC 4041 and new results are soon to be reported for NGC 1300 and NGC 2748. Complementary programmes are also looking for the presence of nuclear star clusters in our Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and archival Near-infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) images. We are also currently analysing United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Fast Track Imager (UFTI) near-infrared images to determine the surface brightness profiles for 37 of the galaxies in the sample.