Related papers: Self-Gravitating Eccentric Disk Models for the Dou…
We present a method for constructing models of weakly self-gravitating, finite dispersion eccentric stellar disks around central black holes. The disk is stationary in a frame rotating at a constant precession speed. The stars populate…
We construct dynamical models of the ``double'' nucleus of M31 in which the nucleus consists of an eccentric disk of stars orbiting a central black hole. The principal approximation in these models is that the disk stars travel in a Kepler…
We present three-dimensional eccentric disc models of the nucleus of M31, modelling the disc as a linear combination of thick rings of massless stars orbiting in the potential of a central black hole. Our models are nonparametric…
The nucleus of M31 may be a thick eccentric disk, composed of stars traveling on nearly Keplerian orbits around a black hole or other dark compact object. This hypothesis reproduces most of the features seen in HST photometry of the center…
The central bulge of M31 is observed to have two distinct brightness peaks with the separation of $\sim$ 2 pc. Tremaine (1995) recently proposed a new idea that the M31's nucleus is actually a single thick eccentric disk surrounding the…
The dynamics of two massive black holes in a rotationally supported nuclear disc of 10^8 solar masses is explored using N-Body/SPH simulations. Gas and star particles are co-present in the disc. Described by a Mestel profile, the disc has a…
The double nucleus geometry of M31 is currently best explained by the eccentric disk hypothesis of Tremaine, but whether the eccentric disk resulted from the tidal disruption of an inbounding star cluster by a nuclear black hole, or by an…
We present a kinematic study of the nuclear stellar disk in M31 at infrared wavelengths using high spatial resolution integral field spectroscopy. The spatial resolution achieved, FWHM = 0."12 (0.45 pc at the distance of M31), has only…
The M31 nucleus contains a supermassive black hole embedded in a massive stellar disk of apsidally-aligned eccentric orbits. It has recently been shown that this disk is slowly precessing at a rate consistent with zero. Here we demonstrate…
The nuclear rotation curve of M31, as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope Faint Object Camera Spectrograph, shows a significant disturbance coinciding with the off-center brightness peak, P1. This +/- 60 km/s feature is distinguished by…
Due to its proximity, the mass of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of Andromeda galaxy (M31), the most massive black hole in the Local Group of galaxies, has been measured by several methods involving the kinematics of a stellar…
Sub-arcsecond imagery (HRCAM, 0".35 - 0".57 FWHM) and two-dimensional spectrography (TIGER, 0".9 FWHM) of the central nucleus of M31 have been obtained at CFHT. The photometric data clearly show the double-peaked nucleus, in excellent…
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 consider warped equilibrium configurations for stellar and gaseous disks in the Keplerian force-field of a supermassive black hole, assuming that the self-gravity of the disk provides the only acting torques. Modeling the disk as a…
We present stellar dynamical models of the lopsided, double-peaked nucleus of M31, derived from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry. A Schwarzscild-type method, in conjunction with Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, was employed to…
We report observations of the double nucleus of M31 with the f/48 long-slit spectrograph of the HST Faint Object Camera. We obtain a total exposure of 19,000 sec. over 7 orbits, with the 0.063-arcsec-wide slit along the line between the two…
The nucleus of our nearest, large galactic neighbor, M31, contains an eccentric nuclear disk--a disk of stars on eccentric, apsidally-aligned orbits around a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Previous studies of eccentric nuclear disks…
Accretion disks around stars, or other central massive bodies, can support long-lived, slowly precessing $m=1$ disturbances in which the fluid motion is nearly Keplerian with non-zero eccentricity. We study such `slow modes' in disks that…
We present HST spectroscopy of the nucleus of M31 obtained with STIS. Spectra taken around the CaT lines at 8500 see only the red giants in the double bright- ness peaks P1 and P2. In contrast, spectra taken at 3600-5100 A are sensitive to…
We present new optical long-slit data along 6 position angles of the bulge region of M31. We derive accurate stellar and gas kinematics reaching 5 arcmin from the center, where the disk light contribution is always less than 30%, and out to…