Measuring the low mass end of the M• - σ relation

Journal article

We show that high quality laser guide star (LGS) adaptive optics (AO) observations of nearby early-type galaxies are possible when the tip-tilt correction is done by guiding on nuclei while the focus compensation due to the changing distance to the sodium layer is made 'open loop'. We achieve corrections such that 40% of flux comes from R<0.2 arcsec. To measure a black hole mass (M•) one needs integral field observations of both high spatial resolution and large field of view. With these data it is possible to determine the lower limit to M• even if the spatial resolution of the observations are up to a few times larger than the sphere of influence of the black hole. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Authors: Krajnović, D; McDermid, R; Cappellari, M; Davies, R

• Journal: AIP Conference Proceedings
• Volume: 1240
• Pages: 215-218
• Publication date: 2010-01-01
• DOI: 10.1063/1.3458490
• EISSN: 1551-7616
• ISSN: 0094-243X
• Language: English