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Black Hole

Lensing of space time around a black hole. At Oxford we study black holes observationally and theoretically on all size and time scales - it is some of our core work.

Credit: ALAIN RIAZUELO, IAP/UPMC/CNRS. CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE IMAGES.

Michele Cappellari

Professor of Astrophysics

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Galaxy formation and evolution
  • Extremely Large Telescope
michele.cappellari@physics.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: 01865 (2)73647
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 755
  • About
  • Publications

WISDOM project -- XXIII. Star-formation efficiencies of eight early-type galaxies and bulges observed with SITELLE and ALMA

(2025)

Authors:

Anan Lu, Daryl Haggard, Martin Bureau, Jindra Gensior, Carmelle Robert, Thomas G Williams, Fu-Heng Liang, Woorak Choi, Timothy A Davis, Ilaria Ruffa, Sara Babic, Hope Boyce, Michele Cappellari, Benjamin Cheung, Laurent Drissen, Jacob S Elford, Thomas Martin, Carter Rhea, Laurie Rousseau-Nepton, Marc Sarzi, Hengyue Zhang
More details from the publisher

E-INSPIRE - I. Bridging the gap with the local Universe: Stellar population of a statistical sample of ultra-compact massive galaxies at z < 0.3

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) (2025) staf516

Authors:

John Mills, Chiara Spiniello, Alexey Sergeyev, Crescenzo Tortora, Vladyslav Khramtsov, Giuseppe D’Ago, Michalina Maksymowicz-Maciata, João PV Benedetti, Anna Ferré-Mateu, Michele Cappellari, Roger Davies, Johanna Hartke, Charles Rosen
More details from the publisher

Early-Type Galaxies: Elliptical and S0 Galaxies, or Fast and Slow Rotators

(2025)
Details from ArXiV

E-INSPIRE -- I. Bridging the gap with the local Universe: Stellar population of a statistical sample of ultra-compact massive galaxies at $z<0.3$

(2025)

Authors:

John Mills, Chiara Spiniello, Alexey Sergeyev, Crescenzo Tortora, Vladyslav Khramtsov, Giuseppe D'Ago, Michalina Maksymowicz-Maciata, João PV Benedetti, Anna Ferré-Mateu, Michele Cappellari, Roger Davies, Johanna Hartke, Charles Rosen
More details from the publisher

WISDOM Project – XXII. A 5 per cent precision CO-dynamical supermassive black hole mass measurement in the galaxy NGC 383

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 537:1 (2025) 520-536

Authors:

Hengyue Zhang, Martin Bureau, Ilaria Ruffa, Michele Cappellari, Timothy A Davis, Pandora Dominiak, Jacob S Elford, Satoru Iguchi, Federico Lelli, Marc Sarzi, Thomas G Williams

Abstract:

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title> <jats:p>We present a measurement of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass of the nearby lenticular galaxy NGC 383, based on Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) observations of the $^{12}$CO(2-1) emission line with an angular resolution of $0.050{\,\rm arcsec}\times 0.024{\,\rm arcsec}$ ($\approx 16\times 8$ pc$^2$). These observations spatially resolve the nuclear molecular gas disc down to $\approx 41\,300$ Schwarzschild radii and the SMBH sphere of influence by a factor of $\approx 24$ radially, better than any other SMBH mass measurement using molecular gas to date. The high resolution enables us to probe material with a maximum circular velocity of $\approx 1040$ km s$^{-1}$, even higher than those of the highest resolution SMBH mass measurements using megamasers. We detect a clear Keplerian increase (from the outside in) of the line-of-sight rotation velocities, a slight offset between the gas disc kinematic (i.e. the position of the SMBH) and morphological (i.e. the centre of the molecular gas emission) centres, an asymmetry of the innermost rotation velocity peaks and evidence for a mild position angle warp and/or non-circular motions within the central $\approx 0.3\,{\rm arcsec}$. By forward modelling the mass distribution and ALMA data cube, we infer an SMBH mass of $(3.58\pm 0.19)\times 10^9$ M$_\odot$ ($1\sigma$ confidence interval), more precise (5 per cent) but consistent within $\approx 1.4\sigma$ with the previous measurement using lower resolution molecular gas data. Our measurement emphasizes the importance of high spatial resolution observations for precise SMBH mass determinations.</jats:p>
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