Kinematics of Ionized Gas in the Dusty Nuclear Disk in NGC 6251; An Excellent Candidate for a Massive Black Hole

Details Kinematics of Ionized Gas in the Dusty Nuclear Disk in NGC 6251; An Excellent Candidate for a Massive Black Hole Kinematics of Ionized Gas in the Dusty Nuclear Disk in NGC 6251; An Excellent Candidate for a Massive Black Hole

Jul 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996hst..prop.6653f&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #6653

Physics

Hst Proposal Id #6653 Galaxies &Amp, Clusters

Scientific paper

We propose to use narrow-band WFPC2 images and FOS spectra to study the morphology and dynamics of the ionized gas in the nuclear disk of the elliptical galaxy NGC 6251. Our aim is to study the disk around the active nucleus, and to establish the presence and mass of a central, massive black hole, following the same procedure that led to a successful detection of black holes in M87 and NGC 4261 {Ford et al. 1994, Harmes et al. 1994, Ferrarese et al. 1996}. NGC 6251 is ideal for this type of study; as in M87 and NGC 4261 {Ford et al. 1994, Jaffe et al. 1994}, NGC 6251 harbors a small nuclear dust disk {O'Neil and Lynds, 1994}, and is a very powerful radio galaxy. The minor axis of the dust disk is aligned with the spectacular 100 kpc radio jet and the axis of the Mpc scale radio lobes {Waggett, Warner, and Baldwin, 1977}, an alignment also found in M87 and NGC 4261, suggesting that the NGC 6251 disk is causally related to the nuclear activity. Nuclear disks of ionized gas and dust provide a powerful way to measure the central potential. Indeed, HST/FOS spectra of M87 and NGC 4261 {Harms et al. 1994, Ferrarese et al. 1996} allowed us to study the orbital motion of the ionized gas in the nuclear disks, and enabled measurement of central masses of 2.4X10^9 solar masses and 1.2X10^9 solar masses in the two galaxies.

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