Related papers: AMUSE-Virgo II. Down-sizing in black hole accretio…

Stellar bars can lead to gas inflow toward the center of a galaxy and stimulate nuclear star formation. However, there is no compelling evidence on whether they also feed a central supermassive black hole: by measuring the fractions of…

Black hole mass, along with mass accretion rate, is a fundamental property of active galactic nuclei. Black hole mass sets an approximate upper limit to AGN energetics via the Eddington limit. We collect and compare all AGN black hole mass…

The Ultra Luminous X-ray (ULX) source HLX-1 in the galaxy ESO 243-49 has an observed maximum unabsorbed X-ray luminosity of 1.3e42 erg/s (0.2-10.0 keV). From the conservative assumption that this value exceeds the Eddington limit by at most…

Dust enshrouded activity can ideally be studied by mid-infrared (MIR) observations. In order to explore the AGN versus star forming origin of the nuclear MIR emission of galaxies, observations of high spatial resolution are required. Here…

We study a large sample of dwarf galaxies using archival Chandra X-ray observations, with the aim of detecting accreting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). IMBHs are expected to inhabit dwarf galaxies and to produce specific signatures…

We present a study of the host bulge properties and their relations with the black hole mass on a sample of 10 intermediate-type active galactic nuclei (AGN). Our sample consists mainly of early type spirals, four of them hosting a bar. For…

We investigate the relation between X-ray nuclear emission, optical emission line luminosities and black hole masses for a sample of 47 Seyfert galaxies. The sample, which has been selected from the Palomar optical spectroscopic survey of…

We study the X-ray emission from NGC1277, a galaxy in the core of the Perseus cluster, for which van den Bosch et al. have recently claimed the presence of an UltraMassive Black Hole (UMBH) of mass 1.7 times 10^10 Msun, unless the IMF of…

In order to find an explanation for the radiative quiescence of supermassive black holes in the local Universe, for a sample of nearby galaxies the most accurate estimates are collected for the mass of a central black hole M_BH, the nuclear…

We present the identification and analysis of an unbiased sample of AGN that lie within the local galaxy population. Using the MPA-JHU catalogue (based on SDSS DR8) and 3XMM DR7 we define a parent sample of 25,949 local galaxies ($z \leq…

X-ray and mid-infrared emission are signposts of the accretion of matter onto the supermassive black holes that reside at the centres of most galaxies. As a major step towards understanding accreting supermassive black holes and their role…

The ability to accurately discern active massive black holes (BHs) in nearby dwarf galaxies is paramount to understanding the origins and processes of "seed" BHs in the early Universe. We present Chandra X-ray Observatory observations of a…

(Abridged) The X-ray background can be used to constrain the accretion history of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). A knowledge of the hard X-ray bolometric correction, \kappa_{2-10keV} is a vital input into…

Black hole masses in Active Galactic Nuclei have been determined in 35 objects through reverberation mapping of the emission line region. I mention some uncertainties of the method, such as the ``scale factor'' relating the Virial Product…

A mild correlation exists in active galaxies between the mean black hole accretion, as traced by the mean X-ray luminosity $\left<{\rm L}_{\rm X}\right>$, and the host galaxy stellar mass M$_*$, characterised by a normalisation steadily…

We present measurements of black hole masses and Eddington ratios for a sample of 38 bright (M$_{1450}$ < -24.4 mag) quasars at 5.8 < z < 7.5, derived from VLT/X-shooter near-IR spectroscopy of their broad CIV and MgII emission lines. The…

We present an analysis of the optical nuclear spectra from the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a sample of giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies. GLSB galaxies are extreme late type spirals that are large, isolated and poorly evolved…

We derive masses of the central super-massive black hole (SMBH) and accretion rates for 154 type1 AGN belonging to a well-defined X-ray-selected sample, the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Sample (XBS). To this end, we use the most recent…

It is widely known that in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and black hole X-ray binaries (BHXBs), there is a tight correlation among their radio luminosity ($L_R$), X-ray luminosity ($L_X$) and BH mass ($\mbh$), the so-called `fundamental…

The vast majority of optically identified active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the local Universe reside in host galaxies with prominent bulges, supporting the hypothesis that black hole formation and growth is fundamentally connected to the…