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Related papers: The Megamaser Cosmology Project. II. The Angular-D…

200 papers

We report measurements of centripetal accelerations of maser spectral components of NGC 4258 for 51 epochs spanning 1994 to 2004. This is the second paper of a series, in which the goal is determination of a new geometric maser distance to…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 E. M. L. Humphreys , M. J. Reid , L. J. Greenhill , J. M. Moran , A. L. Argon

We determine the mass of the black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 4258 by constructing axisymmetric dynamical models of the galaxy. These models are constrained by high spatial resolution imaging and long-slit spectroscopy of…

We present the first measurement of the mass of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the nearby double-barred spiral galaxy NGC 3504 as part of the Measuring Black Holes Below the Milky Way ($M_{\star}$) mass galaxies (MBHBM$_{\star}$)…

We present further results of a search for extragalactic submillimeter H2O masers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). The detection of a 321 GHz H2O maser in the nearby Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, the Circinus galaxy,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-08-17 Yoshiaki Hagiwara , Shinji Horiuchi , Akihiro Doi , Makoto Miyoshi , Philip G. Edwards

We describe a method to identify inclined water maser disks orbiting massive black holes and to potentially use them to measure black hole masses. Due to the geometry of maser amplification pathways, the minority of water maser disks are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-03-15 Jeremy Darling

Water megamasers at 22 GHz with a gas disk configuration in galaxies provide the most precise measurements of supermassive black hole masses, as well as independent constraints on the Hubble constant in the nearby universe. The existence of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-18 Man I Lam , C. Jakob Walcher , Feng Gao , Ming Yang , Huan Li , Lei Hao

We use new precision measurements of black hole masses from water megamaser disks to investigate scaling relations between macroscopic galaxy properties and supermassive black hole (BH) mass. The megamaser-derived BH masses span 10^6-10^8…

Megamaser disks provide the most precise and accurate extragalactic supermassive black hole masses. Here we describe a search for megamasers in nearby galaxies using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). We focus on galaxies where we believe that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-06-07 Remco C. E. van den Bosch , Jenny E. Greene , James A. Braatz , Anca Constantin , Cheng-Yu Kuo

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) hosting water megamaser disks enable exceptionally precise geometric determinations of black hole mass, distance, inclination, and dynamical center. In anticipation of upcoming space-based very long baseline…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-08 Roman N. Burridge , Geoffrey C. Bower

NGC 4258 is an SABbc Seyfert galaxy, located at a distance of $7.2 \pm 0.3$ Mpc. This object is well known by its nearly edge-on molecular nuclear disc, located between 0.16 and 0.28 pc from the nucleus, whose H$_2$O maser emission allows a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-11-16 R. B. Menezes , J. E. Steiner , Patrícia da Silva

Masers are a unique tool to investigate the emitting gas in the innermost regions of AGNs and to map accretion disks and tori orbiting around supermassive black holes. IC485, which is classified as a LINER or Seyfert galaxy, hosts a bright…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-01-31 E. Ladu , A. Tarchi , P. Castangia , G. Surcis , J. A. Braatz , F. Panessa , D. Pesce

The 25 years following the serendipitous discovery of megamasers have seen tremendous progress in the study of luminous extragalactic H$_2$O emission. Single-dish monitoring and high resolution interferometry have been used to identify…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 C. Henkel , J. A. Braatz , A. Tarchi , A. B. Peck , N. M. Nagar , L. J. Greenhill , M. Wang , Y. Hagiwara

The black hole (BH)-bulge correlations have greatly influenced the last decade of effort to understand galaxy evolution. Current knowledge of these correlations is limited predominantly to high BH masses (M_BH> 10^8 M_sun) that can be…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-19 J. E. Greene , C. Y. Peng , M. Kim , C. Y. Kuo , J. A. Braatz , C. M. V. Impellizzeri , J. J. Condon , K. Y. Lo , C. Henkel , M. J. Reid

In this work, we obtain Hubble constant ($H_0$) estimates by using two galaxy cluster gas mass fraction measurement samples, Type Ia supernovae luminosity distances, and the validity of the cosmic distance duality relation. Notably, the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-09-09 Javier E. Gonzalez , Marcelo Ferreira , Leorando R. Colaço , Rodrigo F. L. Holanda , Rafael C. Nunes

VLBA and EVN radio observations of H2O masers at 22 GHz and methanol masers at 6.7 GHz have been used to obtain images of the maser spots in the infrared object GL2789, which is associated with the young stellar object V645Cyg. The position…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 V. I. Slysh , M. A. Voronkov , I. E. Val'tts , V. Migenes

NGC 4395 is a bulgeless spiral galaxy, harboring one of the nearest known type 1 Seyfert nuclei. Although there is no consensus on the mass of its central engine, several estimates suggest it to be one of the lightest massive black holes…

We present a Very Long Baseline Interferometry image of the water maser emission in the nuclear region of NGC3393. The maser emission has a linear distribution oriented at a position angle of $\sim -34\degr$, perpendicular to both the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Paul T. Kondratko , Lincoln J. Greenhill , James M. Moran

In this work we perform a Bayesian statistical fit to estimate the mass-to-distance ratio and the recessional redshift of 10 different black holes hosted at the centre of active galactic nuclei, namely the galaxies NGC 5765b, NGC 6323, UGC…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-10-28 D. Villaraos , A. Herrera-Aguilar , U. Nucamendi , G. Gonzalez-Juarez , R. Lizardo-Castro

H2O maser disks with Keplerian rotation in active galactic nuclei offer a clean way to determine accurate black hole mass and the Hubble constant. An important assumption made in using a Keplerian H2O maser disk for measuring the black hole…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-06-13 C. -Y. Kuo , M. J. Reid , J. A. Braatz , F. Gao , C. M. V. Impellizzeri , W. T. Chien

We explore the warm molecular and ionized gas in the centers of two megamaser disk galaxies using K-band spectroscopy. Our ultimate goal is to determine how gas is funneled onto the accretion disk, here traced by megamaser spots on sub-pc…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-19 Jenny E. Greene , Anil Seth , Mariya Lyubenova , Jonelle Walsh , Glenn van de Ven , Ronald Laesker