A Quintet of Black Hole Mass Determinations
Abstract
We report five new measurements of central black hole masses based on STIS and WFPC2 observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and on axisymmetric, three-integral, Schwarzschild orbit-library kinematic models. We selected a sample of galaxies within a narrow range in velocity dispersion that cover a range of galaxy parameters (including Hubble type and core/power-law surface density profile) where we expected to be able to resolve the galaxy's sphere of influence based on the predicted value of the black hole mass from the M-sigma relation. We find masses in units of 10^8 solar masses for the following galaxies: NGC 3585, M_BH = 3.4 (+1.5, -0.6); NGC 3607, M_BH = 1.2 (+0.4, -0.4); NGC 4026, M_BH = 2.1 (+0.7, -0.4); and NGC 5576, M_BH = 1.8 (+0.3, -0.4), all significantly excluding M_BH = 0. For NGC 3945, M_BH = 0.09 (+0.17, -0.21), which is significantly below predictions from M-sigma and M-L relations and consistent with M_BH = 0, though the presence of a double bar in this galaxy may present problems for our axisymmetric code.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0901.4162,
title = {A Quintet of Black Hole Mass Determinations},
author = {Kayhan Gultekin and Douglas O. Richstone and Karl Gebhardt and Tod R. Lauer and Jason Pinkney and M. C. Aller and Ralf Bender and Alan Dressler and S. M. Faber and Alexei V. Filippenko and Richard Green and Luis C. Ho and John Kormendy and Christos Siopis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.4162},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
15 pages, 21 figures, 13 tables. Accepted by ApJ