BROAD-LINE REVERBERATION IN THE KEPLER-FIELD SEYFERT GALAXY Zw 229-015

Journal Article · Tue May 10 00:00:00 EDT 2011 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/732/2/121· OSTI ID:21576838

Barth, Aaron J; Nguyen, My L ^[1]; Malkan, Matthew A ^[2]; Filippenko, Alexei V; Li, Weidong; Cenko, S Bradley; Choi, Jieun; Duchene, Gaspard; Ganeshalingam, Mohan ^[3]; Gorjian, Varoujan ^[4]; Joner, Michael D ^[5]; Bennert, Vardha Nicola ^[6]; Botyanszki, Janos; Childress, Michael; Cucciara, Antonino ^[7]; Comerford, Julia M ^[8]; Da Silva, Robert ^[9]; Fumagalli, Michele ^[10]; Gates, Elinor L ^[11]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, 4129 Frederick Reines Hall, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-4575 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (United States)
3. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411 (United States)
4. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Boulevard, MS 169-327, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, N283 ESC, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602-4360 (United States)
6. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 (United States)
7. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
8. Astronomy Department, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 (United States)
9. University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
10. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
11. Lick Observatory, P.O. Box 85, Mount Hamilton, CA 95140 (United States)

The Seyfert 1 galaxy Zw 229-015 is among the brightest active galaxies being monitored by the Kepler mission. In order to determine the black hole mass in Zw 229-015 from H{beta} reverberation mapping, we have carried out nightly observations with the Kast Spectrograph at the Lick 3 m telescope during the dark runs from 2010 June through December, obtaining 54 spectroscopic observations in total. We have also obtained nightly V-band imaging with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope at Lick Observatory and with the 0.9 m telescope at the Brigham Young University West Mountain Observatory over the same period. We detect strong variability in the source, which exhibited more than a factor of two change in broad H{beta} flux. From cross-correlation measurements, we find that the H{beta} light curve has a rest-frame lag of 3.86{sup +0.69}{sub -0.90} days with respect to the V-band continuum variations. We also measure reverberation lags for H{alpha} and H{gamma} and find an upper limit to the H{delta} lag. Combining the H{beta} lag measurement with a broad H{beta} width of {sigma}{sub line} = 1590 {+-} 47 km s{sup -1} measured from the rms variability spectrum, we obtain a virial estimate of M{sub BH} = 1.00{sup +0.19}{sub -0.24} x 10{sup 7} M{sub sun} for the black hole in Zw 229-015. As a Kepler target, Zw 229-015 will eventually have one of the highest-quality optical light curves ever measured for any active galaxy, and the black hole mass determined from reverberation mapping will serve as a benchmark for testing relationships between black hole mass and continuum variability characteristics in active galactic nuclei.

• OSTI ID: 21576838
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 732, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/732/2/121; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BLACK HOLES
GALAXY NUCLEI
MASS
SEYFERT GALAXIES
GALAXIES