2018/03/28 by S. Aswathy, S Aswathy, C. D. Ravikumar · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Bulge #Elliptical galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Galaxy merger #Luminosity #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Radio galaxy #Stars #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sty807
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 477(2), 2399-2405 (Oxford University Press) · 8 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2018/03/28 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/28 · arxiv updated 2018/04/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We propose a novel technique to estimate the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) residing at the centres of massive galaxies in the nearby Universe using simple photometry. Aperture photometry using SExtractor is employed to determine the central intensity ratio (CIR) at the optical centre of the galaxy image for a sample of 49 nearby galaxies with SMBH mass estimations. We find that the CIR of ellipticals and classical bulges is strongly correlated with SMBH masses whereas pseudo-bulges and ongoing mergers show significant scatter. Also, the CIR of low-luminosity AGNs in the sample shows significant connection with the 5 GHz nuclear radio emission suggesting a stronger link between the former and the SMBH evolution in these galaxies. In addition, it is seen that various structural and dynamical properties of the SMBH host galaxies are correlated with the CIR making the latter an important parameter in galaxy evolution studies. Finally, we propose the CIR to be an efficient and simple tool not only to distinguish classical bulges from pseudo-bulges but also to estimate the mass of the central SMBH.