USING MEGAMASER DISKS TO PROBE BLACK HOLE ACCRETION
- Department of Astrophysics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540 (United States)
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 (United States)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903 (United States)
- Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, Auf dem Huegel 69, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
- GMTO Corporation, 251 S. Lake Ave., Suite 300, Pasadena, CA 91101 (United States)
- Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, P.O. Box 23-141, Taipei 16617, Taiwan (China)
We examine the alignment between H{sub 2}O megamaser disks on subparsec scales with circumnuclear disks and bars on <500 pc scales observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/WFC3. The HST imaging reveals young stars, indicating the presence of gas. The megamaser disks are not well aligned with the circumnuclear bars or disks as traced by stars in the HST images. We speculate on the implications of the observed misalignments for fueling supermassive black holes in gas-rich spiral galaxies. In contrast, we find a strong preference for the rotation axes of the megamaser disks to align with radio continuum jets observed on {approx}> 50 pc scales, in those galaxies for which radio continuum detections are available. Subarcsecond observations of molecular gas with ALMA will enable a more complete understanding of the interplay between circumnuclear structures.
- OSTI ID:
- 22140149
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 771, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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