Program: GN-2012B-Q-31
| Title: | Supermassive Black Holes in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| PI: | Nicholas J McConnell |
| Co-I(s): | James R Graham, Chung-Pei Ma, Tod R Lauer, Karl Gebhardt |
Abstract
We propose to measure the central black hole masses in three giant elliptical galaxies with the integral-field unit on GMOS-N. Combined with a semester 2012A program for GMOS-S, these observations will build a statistially significant sample of dynamically measured black holes in the local Universe's most massive galaxies. By determining the cosmic scatter in black hole mass for galaxies in this mass range, we will distinguish between different scenarios for galaxy growth via mergers, and between hierarchical versus stochastic growth for the most massive black holes.
Publications using this program's data
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[data]
[ADS] The MASSIVE Survey XIII -- Spatially Resolved Stellar Kinematics in the Central 1 kpc of 20 Massive Elliptical Galaxies with the GMOS-North Integral-Field Spectrograph
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[data]
[ADS] The MASSIVE Survey XIV—Stellar Velocity Profiles and Kinematic Misalignments from 200 pc to 20 kpc in Massive Early-type Galaxies
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[data]
[ADS] Triaxial Orbit-based Dynamical Modeling of Galaxies with Supermassive Black Holes and an Application to Massive Elliptical Galaxy NGC 1453