Massive Black Holes in Early Type Galaxies

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

Jul 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004hst..prop10328f&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #10328

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Hst Proposal Id #10328

Scientific paper

This program is a continuation of the Cycles 11 and 12 ACS/GTO programs 9293 and 9986. 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 early-type 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 completed the imaging {NGC 7720} and performed STIS spectroscopy of two of the best candidates, NGC 404 and NGC 2768. In this Cycle 13 program, we continue the STIS spectroscopy for two other galaxies, NGC 6166 and NGC 7720.

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