2007/09/06 by A. Beifiori, E. M. Corsini, Beifiori, A. +11
Physics and Astronomy · Computer Science · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Computational Physics and Python Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0709.0866
The growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) appears to be closely linked with the formation of spheroids. There is a pressing need to acquire better statistics on SMBH masses, since the existing samples are preferentially weighted toward early-type galaxies with very massive SMBHs. With this motivation we started a project aimed at measuring upper limits on the mass of the SMBHs that can be present in the center of all the nearby galaxies (D<100 Mpc) for which STIS/G750M spectra are available in the HST archive. These upper limits will be derived by modeling the central emission-line widths ([NII], Halpha and [SII]) observed over an aperture of ~0.1" (R<50 pc). Here we present our preliminary results for a subsample of 76 bulges.