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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 – III: Molecular gas measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in the barred lenticular galaxy NGC4429

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 473:3 (2017) 3818-3834

Authors:

TA Davis, Martin Bureau, K Onishi, FVD Voort, Michele Cappellari, S Iguchi, Lijie Liu, EV North, M Sarzi, Mark D Smith

Abstract:

As part of the mm-Wave Interferometric Survey of Dark Object Masses project we present an estimate of the mass of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the nearby fast-rotating early-type galaxy NGC4429, that is barred and has a boxy/peanut-shaped bulge. This estimate is based on Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) cycle-2 observations of the 12CO(3-2) emission line with a linear resolution of ≈13 pc (0.18 arcsec × 0.14 arcsec). NGC4429 has a relaxed, flocculent nuclear disc of molecular gas that is truncated at small radii, likely due to the combined effects of gas stability and tidal shear. The warm/dense 12CO(3-2) emitting gas is confined to the inner parts of this disc, likely again because the gas becomes more stable at larger radii, preventing star formation. The gas disc has a low velocity dispersion of 2.2+0.68−0.65 km s−1. Despite the inner truncation of the gas disc, we are able to model the kinematics of the gas and estimate a mass of (1.5 ± 0.1+0.15−0.35) × 108 M⊙ for the SMBH in NGC4429 (where the quoted uncertainties reflect the random and systematic uncertainties, respectively), consistent with a previous upper limit set using ionized gas kinematics. We confirm that the V-band mass-to-light ratio changes by ≈30 per cent within the inner 400 pc of NGC4429, as suggested by other authors. This SMBH mass measurement based on molecular gas kinematics, the sixth presented in the literature, once again demonstrates the power of ALMA to constrain SMBH masses.
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Detection of Enhanced Central Mass-to-Light Ratios in Low-Mass Early-Type Galaxies: Evidence for Black Holes?

(2017)

Authors:

Renuka Pechetti, Anil Seth, Michele Cappellari, Richard McDermid, Mark den Brok, Steffen Mieske, Jay Strader
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The KMOS Cluster Survey (KCS). I. The fundamental plane and the formation ages of cluster galaxies at redshift 1.4 < Z < 1.6

Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 846:2 (2017) 1-25

Authors:

A Beifiori, JT Mendel, JCC Chan, RP Saglia, R Bender, Michele Cappellari, Roger L Davies, A Galametz, Ryan CW Houghton, Laura J Prichard, R Smith, John P Stott, DJ Wilman, Ian J Lewis, R Sharples, M Wegner

Abstract:

The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We present the analysis of the fundamental plane (FP) for a sample of 19 massive red-sequence galaxies (M· > ×4 10 10 M·) in three known overdensities at 1.39 1.61 < < z from the K-band Multi-object Spectrograph (KMOS) Cluster Survey, a guaranteed-time program with spectroscopy from the KMOS at the VLT and imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope. As expected, we find that the FP zero-point in B band evolves with redshift, from the value 0.443 of Coma to -0.10±0.09, -0.19±0.05, and -0.29±0.12 for our clusters at z = 1.39, z = 1.46, and z = 1.61, respectively. For the most massive galaxies (log 1 M M· > 1) in our sample, we translate the FP zero-point evolution into a mass-to-light-ratio M/L evolution, finding D log 0.46 0.10 M L z B = - (D log )0.52 0.07 M L z B = -to(D log ) 0.55 0.10 M L z B = - respectively. We assess the potential contribution of the galaxy structural and stellar velocity dispersion evolution to the evolution of the FP zero-point and find it to be ∼6%-35% of the FP zero-point evolution. The rate of M/L evolution is consistent with galaxies evolving passively. Using single stellar population models, we find an average age of 2.33- +0.51 0.86 Gyr for the log 1 M M· > 1 galaxies in our massive and virialized cluster at z = 1.39,1.59- +0.62 1.40 Gyr in a massive but not virialized cluster at z = 1.46, and 1.20- +0.47 1.03 Gyr in a protocluster at z = 1.61. After accounting for the difference in the age of the universe between redshifts, the ages of the galaxies in the three overdensities are consistent within the errors, with possibly a weak suggestion that galaxies in the most evolved structure are older.
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The KMOS Cluster Survey (KCS) I: The fundamental plane and the formation ages of cluster galaxies at redshift $1.4

(2017)

Authors:

Alessandra Beifiori, J Trevor Mendel, Jeffrey CC Chan, Roberto P Saglia, Ralf Bender, Michele Cappellari, Roger L Davies, Audrey Galametz, Ryan CW Houghton, Laura J Prichard, Russel Smith, John P Stott, David J Wilman, Ian J Lewis, Ray Sharples, Michael Wegner
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The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

(2017)

Authors:

Bela Abolfathi, DS Aguado, Gabriela Aguilar, Carlos Allende Prieto, Andres Almeida, Tonima Tasnim Ananna, Friedrich Anders, Scott F Anderson, Brett H Andrews, Borja Anguiano, Alfonso Aragon-Salamanca, Maria Argudo-Fernandez, Eric Armengaud, Metin Ata, Eric Aubourg, Vladimir Avila-Reese, Carles Badenes, Stephen Bailey, Christophe Balland, Kathleen A Barger, Jorge Barrera-Ballesteros, Curtis Bartosz, Fabienne Bastien, Dominic Bates, Falk Baumgarten, Julian Bautista, Rachael Beaton, Timothy C Beers, Francesco Belfiore, Chad F Bender, Mariangela Bernardi, Matthew A Bershady, Florian Beutler, Jonathan C Bird, Dmitry Bizyaev, Guillermo A Blanc, Michael R Blanton, Michael Blomqvist, Adam S Bolton, Mederic Boquien, Jura Borissova, Jo Bovy, Christian Andres Bradna Diaz, William Nielsen Brandt, Jonathan Brinkmann, Joel R Brownstein, Kevin Bundy, Adam J Burgasser, Etienne Burtin, Nicolas G Busca, Caleb I Canas, Mariana Cano-Diaz, Michele Cappellari, Ricardo Carrera, Andrew R Casey, Bernardo Cervantes Sodi, Yanping Chen, Brian Cherinka, Cristina Chiappini, Peter Doohyun Choi, Drew Chojnowski, Chia-Hsun Chuang, Haeun Chung, Nicolas Clerc, Roger E Cohen, Julia M Comerford, Johan Comparat, Janaina Correa do Nascimento, Luiz da Costa, Marie-Claude Cousinou, Kevin Covey, Jeffrey D Crane, Irene Cruz-Gonzalez, Katia Cunha, Gabriele da Silva Ilha, Guillermo J Damke, Jeremy Darling, James W Davidson, Kyle Dawson, Miguel Angel C de Icaza Lizaola, Axel de la Macorra, Sylvain de la Torre, Nathan De Lee, Victoria de Sainte Agathe, Alice Deconto Machado, Flavia Dell'Agli, Timothee Delubac, Aleksandar M Diamond-Stanic, John Donor, Juan Jose Downes, Niv Drory, Helion du Mas des Bourboux, Christopher J Duckworth, Tom Dwelly, Jamie Dyer, Garrett Ebelke, Arthur Davis Eigenbrot, Daniel J Eisenstein, Yvonne P Elsworth, Eric Emsellem, Mike Eracleous, Ghazaleh Erfanianfar, Stephanie Escoffier, Xiaohui Fan, Emma Fernandez Alvar, JG Fernandez-Trincado, Rafael Fernando Cirolini, Diane Feuillet, Alexis Finoguenov, Scott W Fleming, Andreu Font-Ribera, Gordon Freischlad, Peter Frinchaboy, Hai Fu, Yilen Gomez Maqueo Chew, Lluis Galbany, Ana E Garcia Perez, R Garcia-Dias, DA Garcia-Hernandez, Luis Alberto Garma Oehmichen, Patrick Gaulme, Joseph Gelfand, Hector Gil-Marin, Bruce A Gillespie, Daniel Goddard, Jonay I Gonzalez Hernandez, Violeta Gonzalez-Perez, Kathleen Grabowski, Paul J Green, Catherine J Grier, Alain Gueguen, Hong Guo, Julien Guy, Alex Hagen, Patrick Hall, Paul Harding, Sten Hasselquist, Suzanne Hawley, Christian R Hayes, Fred Hearty, Saskia Hekker, Jesus Hernandez, Hector Hernandez Toledo, David W Hogg, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, Jon Holtzman, Jiamin Hou, Bau-Ching Hsieh, Jason AS Hunt, Timothy A Hutchinson, Ho Seong Hwang, Camilo Eduardo Jimenez Angel, Jennifer A Johnson, Amy Jones, Henrik Jonsson, Eric Jullo, Fahim Sakil Khan, Karen Kinemuchi, David Kirkby, Charles C Kirkpatrick, Francisco-Shu Kitaura, Gillian R Knapp, Jean-Paul Kneib, Juna A Kollmeier, Ivan Lacerna, Richard R Lane, Dustin Lang, David R Law, Jean-Marc Le Goff, Young-Bae Lee, Hongyu Li, Cheng Li, Jianhui Lian, Yu Liang, Marcos Lima, Lihwai Lin, Dan Long, Sara Lucatello, Britt Lundgren, J Ted Mackereth, Chelsea L MacLeod, Suvrath Mahadevan, Marcio Antonio Geimba Maia, Steven Majewski, Arturo Manchado, Claudia Maraston, Vivek Mariappan, Rui Marques-Chaves, Thomas Masseron, Karen L Masters, Richard M McDermid, Ian D McGreer, Matthew Melendez, Sofia Meneses-Goytia, Andrea Merloni, Michael R Merrifield, Szabolcs Meszaros, Andres Meza, Ivan Minchev, Dante Minniti, Eva-Maria Mueller, Francisco Muller-Sanchez, Demitri Muna, Ricardo R Munoz, Adam D Myers, Preethi Nair, Kirpal Nandra, Melissa Ness, Jeffrey A Newman, Robert C Nichol, David L Nidever, Christian Nitschelm, Pasquier Noterdaeme, Julia O'Connell, Ryan James Oelkers, Audrey Oravetz, Daniel Oravetz, Erik Aquino Ortiz, Yeisson Osorio, Zach Pace, Nelson Padilla, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Pedro Alonso Palicio, Hsi-An Pan, Kaike Pan, Taniya Parikh, Isabelle Paris, Changbom Park, Sebastien Peirani, Marcos Pellejero-Ibanez, Samantha Penny, Will J Percival, Ismael Perez-Fournon, Patrick Petitjean, Matthew M Pieri, Marc Pinsonneault, Alice Pisani, Francisco Prada, Abhishek Prakash, Anna Barbara de Andrade Queiroz, M Jordan Raddick, Anand Raichoor, Sandro Barboza Rembold, Hannah Richstein, Rogemar A Riffel, Rogerio Riffel, Hans-Walter Rix, Annie C Robin, Sergio Rodriguez Torres, Carlos Roman-Zuniga, Ashley J Ross, Graziano Rossi, John Ruan, Rossana Ruggeri, Jose Ruiz, Mara Salvato, Ariel G Sanchez, Sebastian F Sanchez, Jorge Sanchez Almeida, Jose R Sanchez-Gallego, Felipe Antonio Santana Rojas, Basilio Xavier Santiago, Ricardo P Schiavon, Jaderson S Schimoia, Edward Schlafly, David Schlegel, Donald P Schneider, William J Schuster, Axel Schwope, Hee-Jong Seo, Aldo Serenelli, Shiyin Shen, Yue Shen, Matthew Shetrone, Michael Shull, Victor Silva Aguirre, Joshua D Simon, Mike Skrutskie, Anze Slosar, Rebecca Smethurst, Verne Smith, Jennifer Sobeck, Garrett Somers, Barbara J Souter, Diogo Souto, Ashley Spindler, David V Stark, Keivan Stassun, Matthias Steinmetz, Dennis Stello, Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann, Alina Streblyanska, Guy Stringfellow, Genaro Suarez, Jing Sun, Laszlo Szigeti, Manuchehr Taghizadeh-Popp, Michael S Talbot, Baitian Tang, Charling Tao, Jamie Tayar, Mita Tembe, Johanna Teske, Aniruddha R Thaker, Daniel Thomas, Patricia Tissera, Rita Tojeiro, Christy Tremonti, Nicholas W Troup, Meg Urry, O Valenzuela, Remco van den Bosch, Jaime Vargas-Gonzalez, Mariana Vargas-Magana, Jose Alberto Vazquez, Sandro Villanova, Nicole Vogt, David Wake, Yuting Wang, Benjamin Alan Weaver, Anne-Marie Weijmans, David H Weinberg, Kyle B Westfall, David G Whelan, Eric Wilcots, Vivienne Wild, Rob A Williams, John Wilson, WM Wood-Vasey, Dominika Wylezalek, Ting Xiao, Renbin Yan, Meng Yang, Jason E Ybarra, Christophe Yeche, Nadia Zakamska, Olga Zamora, Pauline Zarrouk, Gail Zasowski, Kai Zhang, Cheng Zhao, Gong-Bo Zhao, Zheng Zheng, Zheng Zheng, Zhi-Min Zhou, Guangtun Zhu, Joel C Zinn, Hu Zou
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