Massive Black Holes in Early Type Galaxies

Computer Science

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Hst Proposal Id #9293

Scientific paper

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. We will also obtain H-alpha and continuum images to fully characterize the gaseous and dust morphology as well as stellar surface profile in the central regions.

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