Massive Black Holes in Early Type Galaxies

Details Massive Black Holes in Early Type Galaxies Massive Black Holes in Early Type Galaxies

Jul 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003hst..prop.9986f&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #9986

Computer Science

Hst Proposal Id #9986

Scientific paper

This program is a continuation of the Cycle 11 ACS/GTO program 9293. Recently, a nearly perfect relation has been recognized between the masses of the black holes {for 3x10^6 Msun < M_BH < 3x10^9 Msun} at the centers of galaxies and the velocity dispersions of their bulges. However, uncertainties over the exact slope of the correlation still remain, and it is not known if such a relation extends to black holes of lower and higher masses. The discovery of small {r a few hundred pc}, well defined, dust and gas disks in the nuclei of some active elliptical galaxies opened a new avenue for measuring central mass distributions. When ionized gas is present, a small number of high spatial resolution {e.g. STIS} spectra are sufficient to characterize the disk dynamics and the galaxy's central mass {e.g., M87, M81, NGC 4374}. We propose to use STIS spectroscopy to measure black hole masses, using gas dynamics, in the centers of several brightest cluster galaxies {BCGs}, 2 nearby galaxies with low velocity dispersions, and a number of elliptical galaxies known to harbor small nuclear dust disks. The proposed targets encompass a wide range of black hole masses, allowing us to fully examine the M_BH - sigma relationship. In Cycle 11, we obtained H-alpha and continuum images of most of the targets to fully characterize their gaseous and dust morphologies as well as their core stellar surface profile. In Cycle 12, we complete the imaging and perform STIS spectroscopy of the best candidates.

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