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Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
In a recent work we demonstrated that a novel X-ray scaling method, originally introduced for Galactic black holes (GBHs), can be reliably extended to estimate the mass of supermassive black holes accreting at a moderate to high level. Here…
Type II AGNs with polarimetric broad emission line provided strong evidence for the orientation-based unified model for AGNs. We want to investigate whether the polarimetric broad emission line in type II AGNs can be used to calculate their…
In astronomy, the problem of black holes is arguably second in importance only to the problem of cosmology. A current frontier in black hole research is the measurement of spin. During the past three years, the spins of several stellar-mass…
We propose a theoretical principle to measure the mass, spin and direction of spin axis of Kerr black holes (BHs) through observing 2 quantities of the spinning strong gravitational lens effect of BHs. Those observable quantities are…
We present results from a kinematical study of the gas in the nucleus of a sample of three LINER galaxies, obtained from archival HST/STIS long-slit spectra. We found that, while for the elliptical galaxy NGC 5077, the observed velocity…
We estimate black hole masses (M$_{\rm BH}$) for 14 gravitationally lensed quasars using the Balmer lines along with estimates based on MgII and CIV emission lines for four and two of them, respectively. We compare with results obtained for…
We use deep, longslit spectra of the nearby edge on galaxy IC 2531 to obtain gas kinematics out to 5 radial scale-lengths (40 kpc) and 4 vertical scale-heights (1.7 kpc). The large vertical range spanned by our data offers unique leverage…
For type-1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for which the equatorial scattering is the dominant broad line polarization mechanism, it is possible to measure the supermassive black hole mass by tracing the Keplerian motion across the…
We measure the black hole mass in the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) using a new method based on spectroastrometry of a rotating gas disk. The spectroastrometric approach consists in measuring the photocenter position of…
We present new mass measurements for the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the centres of three early-type galaxies. The gas pressure in the surrounding, hot interstellar medium (ISM) is measured through spatially resolved spectroscopy…
We describe a method for the determination of black-hole masses based on information inferred from high-energy spectra. It is required that the spectral energy distribution consist of thermal and Comptonized components. One can then, in…
We present four improved empirical relationships useful for estimating the central black hole mass in nearby AGNs and distant luminous quasars alike using either optical or UV single-epoch spectroscopy. These mass-scaling relationships…
We discuss two methods to estimate black hole (BH) masses using X-ray data only: from the X-ray variability amplitude and from the photon index Gamma. The first method is based on the anti-correlation between BH mass and X-ray variability…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses can be measured by resolving the dynamical influences of the SMBHs on spatially-resolved tracers of the central potentials. Modern long-baseline interferometers have enabled the use of molecular gas as…
Estimating the black hole mass at the center of galaxies is a fundamental step not only for understanding the physics of accretion, but also for the cosmological evolution of galaxies. Recently a new method, based solely on X-ray data, was…
We present a new technique for determining an upper limit for the mass of the black hole in active galactic nuclei showing warm absorption features. The method relies on the balance of radiative and gravitational forces acting on outflowing…
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…
Spectropolarimetric efforts in the last few years have provided an efficient method that is based on the profiles of the polarization plane position angle of broad emission lines in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Here we present black hole…
Supermassive black holes are believed to be ubiquitous at the centers of galaxies. Measuring their masses is extremely challenging yet essential for understanding their role in the formation and evolution of cosmic structure. We present a…