The black hole mass of NGC 4151. II. Stellar dynamical measurement from near-infrared integral field spectroscopy
- Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7 (Canada)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042 (United States)
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2611 (Australia)
- Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, 25 Park Place, Office 610, Atlanta, GA 30303 (United States)
- Dark Cosmology Centre, The Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø (Denmark)
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Instituto de Física, CP 15051, Porto Alegre 91501-970, RS (Brazil)
We present a revised measurement of the mass of the central black hole (M{sub BH} ) in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151. The new stellar dynamical mass measurement is derived by applying an axisymmetric orbit-superposition code to near-infrared integral field data obtained using adaptive optics with the Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS). When our models attempt to fit both the NIFS kinematics and additional low spatial resolution kinematics, our results depend sensitively on how χ{sup 2} is computed—probably a consequence of complex bar kinematics that manifest immediately outside the nuclear region. The most robust results are obtained when only the high spatial resolution kinematic constraints in the nuclear region are included in the fit. Our best estimates for the black hole mass and H-band mass-to-light ratio are M{sub BH} ∼ 3.76 ± 1.15 × 10{sup 7} M{sub ☉} (1σ error) and Y{sub H} ∼ 0.34 ± 0.03 M{sub ☉}/L{sub ☉} (3σ error), respectively (the quoted errors reflect the model uncertainties). Our black hole mass measurement is consistent with estimates from both reverberation mapping (3.57{sub −0.37}{sup +0.45}×10{sup 7} M{sub ⊙}) and gas kinematics (3.0{sub −2.2}{sup +0.75}×10{sup 7} M{sub ⊙}; 1σ errors), and our best-fit mass-to-light ratio is consistent with the photometric estimate of Y{sub H} = 0.4 ± 0.2 M{sub ☉}/L{sub ☉}. The NIFS kinematics give a central bulge velocity dispersion σ{sub c} = 116 ± 3 km s{sup –1}, bringing this object slightly closer to the M{sub BH}-σ relation for quiescent galaxies. Although NGC 4151 is one of only a few Seyfert 1 galaxies in which it is possible to obtain a direct dynamical black hole mass measurement—and thus, an independent calibration of the reverberation mapping mass scale—the complex bar kinematics makes it less than ideally suited for this purpose.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365384
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 791, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Measuring the mass of the central black hole in the bulgeless galaxy NGC 4395 from gas dynamical modeling
Reverberation mapping of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 7469