Related papers: No Supermassive Black Hole in M33?
Forbes et al. recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to localize hundreds of candidate star clusters in NGC 1023, an early-type galaxy at a distance of 11.1 Mpc. Old stars dominate the light of 92% of the clusters and intermediate-age…
Deep infra-red observations and long-term monitoring programs have provided dynamical evidence for a supermassive black hole of mass 3.e6 solar masses associated with the radio source Sagitarrius A* at the center of our Galaxy. The…
Active galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at their center, which grows by accreting matter from the surrounding galaxy. The accretion process in the central ~10 parsecs has not been directly resolved in previous observations, due to…
We report NOEMA and ALMA observations of the nucleus of Andromeda (M31), putting strong constraints on the presence of gas in the form of cold or warm phase, as proposed by Chang et al. M31 hosts the largest supermassive black hole (SMBH)…
Stellar-mass black holes ($3$ $M_\odot \lesssim M_{\rm BH} \lesssim 150$ $M_\odot$) are the natural product of the evolution of heavy stars ($M_{\rm star} \gtrsim 20$ $M_\odot$). In our Galaxy, we expect $10^8$-$10^9$ stellar-mass black…
Massive black holes (MBHs) with a mass below ~ 1e7 Msun are likely to reside at the centre of dense stellar nuclei shaped by 2-body relaxation, close interactions with the MBH and direct collisions. In this contribution, we stress the role…
We demonstrate the power of the black hole mass gap as a novel probe of fundamental physics. New light particles that couple to the Standard Model can act as an additional source of energy loss in the cores of population-III stars,…
Gravitational-wave observations reveal that the rate of merging black holes drops by $\sim2$ orders of magnitude from component masses $\sim 10\,M_{\odot}$ to $\sim 15\,M_{\odot}$. The increased compactness of the black hole progenitor…
We have compelling evidence for stellar-mass black holes (BHs) of ~5-80 M_sun that form through the death of massive stars. We also have compelling evidence for so-called supermassive BHs (10^5-10^10 M_sun) that are predominantly found in…
The globular cluster omega Centauri is one of the largest and most massive members of the galactic system. However, its classification as a globular cluster has been challenged making it a candidate for being the stripped core of an…
Surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope find supermassive black holes (BHs) of 10**6 to 10**9.5 solar masses in every galaxy that has an elliptical-galaxy-like "bulge" component. BHs appear to be standard equipment in galaxy bulges. At the…
The (supermassive black hole mass, $M_\text{BH}$)-(bulge stellar mass, $M_{\rm*,sph}$) relation is, obviously, derived using two quantities. We endeavor to provide accurate values for the latter via detailed multicomponent galaxy…
The collapse of baryons into extremely massive stars with masses exceeding 10^4 M_Sun in a small fraction of protogalaxies at z > 10 is a promising candidate for the origin of supermassive black holes, some of which grow to a billion solar…
The central supermassive black hole (SMBH) of the Andromeda galaxy, known as M31*, exhibits dim electromagnetic emission and is inferred to have an extremely low accretion rate for its remarkable mass ($\sim10^8~\rm~M_\odot$). In this work,…
We have developed a new method for post-Newtonian, high-precision integration of stellar systems containing a super-massive black hole (SMBH), splitting the forces on a particle between a dominant central force and perturbations. We used…
We present the first HST long-slit spectrum of a gaseous disk around a candidate super-massive black-hole. The results of this study on the kinematics of the gaseous disk in M87 are a considerable improvement in both spatial resolution and…
A supermassive black hole SgrA* with the mass ~4x10^6 Msun resides at the centre of our galaxy. Building up such a massive black hole within the ~10^10 year lifetime of our galaxy would require a mean accretion rate of ~4x10^-4 Msun/yr. At…
Supermassive black holes and/or very dense stellar clusters are found in the central regions of galaxies. Nuclear star clusters are present mainly in faint galaxies while upermassive black holes are common in galaxies with masses $\geq…
It is now well-established that a dark, compact object (DCO), very likely a massive black hole (MBH) of around four million solar masses is lurking at the centre of the Milky Way. While a consensus is emerging about the origin and growth of…
We present the first near-infrared integral field spectroscopy observations of the galaxy MCG--6-30-15. The H-band data studied in this paper cover the central 500 pc of the galaxy at the best resolution (0".1) so far. The spectra of the…