2005/10/10 by R. C. W. Houghton, J. Magorrian, John Magorrian +6 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Kinematics #Line-of-sight #Observatory #Physics #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Telescope #Very Large Telescope #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09713.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.367:2-18,2006 · 19 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. High resolution version available at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~rcwh/ngc1399.ps.gz
arxiv created 2005/10/10 · openalex publication_date 2006/02/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present near-infrared (NIR) adaptive optics-assisted spectroscopic observations of the CO (Δμ= 2) absorption bands towards the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399. The observations were made with NAOS-CONICA (on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope) and have a full width at half-maximum resolution of 0.15 arcsec (14 pc). Kinematic analysis of the observations reveals a decoupled core and strongly non-Gaussian line-of-sight velocity profiles in the central 0.2 arcsec (19 pc). NIR imaging also indicates an asymmetric elongation of the central isophotes in the same region. We use spherical orbit-superposition models to interpret the kinematics, using a set of orthogonal ‘eigen-velocity profiles’ that allow us to fit models directly to spectra. The models require a central black hole of mass 1.2+0.5−0.6× 109 M⊙, with a strongly tangentially biased orbit distribution in the inner 40 pc.