Related papers: Black Holes in Active Galaxies
We report the first results of a program to measure accurate stellar velocity dispersions in the bulges of the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for which accurate black hole (BH) masses have been determined via reverberation…
Masses of black holes in nearby galactic nuclei can be measured in a variety of ways, using stellar and gaseous kinematics. Reliable black hole masses are known for several dozen objects, so that demographic questions can start to be…
We present a progress report on a project whose goal is to improve both the precision and accuracy of everberation-based black-hole masses. Reverberation masses appear to be accurate to a factor of about three, and the black-hole mass/bulge…
We discuss the critical importance of black hole mass indicators based on scaling relations in active galaxies. We highlight outstanding uncertainties in these methods and potential paths to substantial progress in the next decade.
Super-high spatial resolution observations in the infrared are now enabling major advances in our understanding of supermassive black hole systems at the centers of galaxies. Infrared interferometry, reaching resolutions of milliarcseconds…
I present mass functions of actively accreting black holes detected in different quasar surveys which in concert cover a wide range of cosmic history. I briefly address what we learn from these mass functions. I summarize the motivation for…
Black hole masses in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are difficult to measure using conventional dynamical methods, but can be determined using the technique of reverberation mapping. However, it is important to verify that the results of…
I review the status of observational determinations of central masses in nearby galactic nuclei. Results from a variety of techniques are summarized, including ground-based and space-based optical spectroscopy, radio VLBI measurements of…
In the local universe, black hole masses have been inferred from the observed increase in the velocities of stars at the centres of their host galaxies. So far, masses of supermassive black holes in the early universe have only been…
Almost every galaxy in the local Universe is observed to have a massive black hole in the centre. The properties of these black holes are observed to tightly correlate with those of their host galaxy which has been interpreted as…
This article discusses stellar dynamical evidence for supermassive black holes in inactive and weakly active galaxies.
Reverberation mapping is a proven technique that is used to measure the size of the broad emission-line region and central black hole mass in active galactic nuclei. More ambitious reverberation mapping programs that are well within the…
Black hole (BH) masses that have been measured by reverberation mapping in active galaxies fall significantly below the correlation between bulge luminosity and BH mass determined from spatially resolved kinematics of nearby normal…
Reverberation mapping methods have been used to measure masses in about three dozen AGNs. The consistency of the virial masses computed from line widths and time delays, the relationship between black hole mass and host-galaxy stellar bulge…
This paper summarizes the observations which provide the best evidence for the presence of black holes in active galactic nuclei. This includes: X-ray variability; kinematical studies using optical emission lines as well as the distribution…
In this small review we present the actual state the knowledge about weighting black holes. Black holes can be found in stellar binary systems in our Galaxy and in other nearby galaxies, in globular clusters, which we can see in our and…
The most compelling evidences for the existence of stellar-mass black holes have been obtained through observations of X-ray binary systems. The application of classical methods and the development of new techniques have allowed us to…
The masses of the central black holes of Active Galactic Nuclei estimated by the reverberation virial technique seem to be significantly smaller than predicted from the black hole mass-bulge luminosity relation for massive black holes…
In the past decade, much effort was devoted to measure the masses of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, to establish the relation between black hole mass and the global/nuclear properties of the host galaxy, and to understand the…
We have embarked in an HST program to determine the masses of black holes in spiral galaxies directly by measuring the line emission arising from an extended accretion disk. For each of the galaxies in our sample we have measured the…