Related papers: The Stellar Dynamics of M87
We present a kinematic study of a sample of 298 planetary nebulas (PNs) in the outer halo of the central Virgo galaxy M87 (NGC~4486). The line-of-sight velocities of these PNs are used to identify sub-components, to measure the angular…
We present the results from a study of the dynamics of the system of globular clusters around M87. After eliminating foreground galactic stars and background galaxies, we end up with a sample of 205 bona fide M87 globular clusters for which…
We present stellar and gaseous kinematics of the inner 120x250pc^2 of the Liner/Seyfert 1 galaxy M81, from optical spectra obtained with the GMOS integral field spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope at a spatial resolution of 10pc. The…
We investigate the origin of the elliptical ring structure observed in the images of the supermassive black hole M87*, aiming to disentangle contributions from gravitational, astrophysical, and imaging effects. Leveraging the enhanced…
We have measured the line-of-sight velocity distribution from integrated stellar light at two points in the outer halo of M87 (NGC 4486), the second-rank galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. The data were taken at R = 480" ($\sim 41.5$ kpc) and R =…
Radial velocities are presented for a new sample of globular clusters in the outer halo of M87 at a distance of 300 to 540 arcsec (24 to 43 kpc) from the center of this galaxy. These are used to augment our previously published data and an…
We estimate the mass of the central black hole in our Galaxy from stellar kinematical data published by Ghez et al. (1998) and Genzel et al. (2000). For this we develop a method, related to Merritt (1993), for non-parametrically…
Recently, the temporal evolution of the angles characterizing the spatial configuration of the jet in the supermassive black hole M87$^\ast$ was measured exhibiting a precessional pattern around the hole's spin axis. It would be due to the…
Following a number of conflicting studies of M87's mass profile, we undertake a dynamical analysis of multiple tracer populations to constrain its mass over a large radius range. We combine stellar kinematics in the central regions with the…
We present a theoretical model for the ionized disk in M87 which includes spiral shock waves. The line emission profiles computed from this model at various positions on the disk are found to be in agreement with the recent Hubble Space…
The observed radial and transverse velocities of individual stars in M15 are implemented as inputs to a fully non-parametric code (CHASSIS) in order to estimate the equilibrium stellar distribution function and the three-dimensional mass…
(Abridged) We study the properties of anisotropic and axisymmetric velocity ellipsoids from maps of the gas velocity dispersion in nearby galaxies. This data allow us to measure the azimuthal-to-radial axis ratio of gas velocity ellipsoids,…
The very careful Event Horizon Telescope estimate of the mass of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Giant CD galaxy M87, allied with recent high quality photometric and spectroscopic measurements, yields a proper dark/luminous…
We describe a maximum-likelihood method for determining the mass distribution in spherical stellar systems from the radial velocities of a population of discrete test particles. The method assumes a parametric form for the mass distribution…
We have obtained long-slit observations of the circumnuclear region of M87 at three different locations, with a spatial sampling of 0.028" using the Faint Object Camera f/48 spectrograph on board HST. These data allow us to determine the…
Ongoing millimeter VLBI observations with the Event Horizon Telescope allow unprecedented study of the innermost portion of black hole accretion flows. Interpreting the observations requires relativistic, time-dependent physical modeling.…
We investigate a hypothesis regarding the origin of the scalelength in halos formed in cosmological N-body simulations. This hypothesis can be viewed as an extension of an earlier idea put forth by Merritt and Aguilar. Our findings suggest…
Recently, a perturbative calculation to the first post-Newtonian order has shown that the analytically worked out Lense-Thirring precession of the orbital angular momentum of a test particle following a circular path around a massive…
We discuss masses of stellar black holes found in binary systems and errors in their determination. The observed mass distribution has a broad shape within the range $4-16 M_\odot$ without visible concentration to some preferred value. On…
The evolution of globular clusters driven by two-body relaxation is investigated by means of numerical integration of the two-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation in energy--angular momentum space. The two- dimensional Fokker-Planck equation…