The MASSIVE Survey. XX. A Triaxial Stellar Dynamical Measurement of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass and Intrinsic Galaxy Shape of Giant Radio Galaxy NGC 315

Abstract

We present a new dynamical measurement of the supermassive black hole mass and intrinsic shape of the stellar halo of the massive radio galaxy NGC 315 as part of the MASSIVE survey. High signal-to-noise ratio spectra from integral-field spectrographs at the Gemini and McDonald Observatories provide stellar kinematic measurements in $304$ spatial bins from the central ${\sim}0.3''$ out to $30''$. Using ${\sim} 2300$ kinematic constraints, we perform triaxial stellar orbit modeling with the TriOS code and search over ${\sim}$15,000 galaxy models with a Bayesian scheme to simultaneously measure six mass and intrinsic shape parameters. NGC 315 is triaxial and highly prolate, with middle-to-long and short-to-long axis ratios of $p=0.854$ and $q=0.833$ and a triaxiality parameter of $T=0.89$. The black hole mass inferred from our stellar kinematics is $M_\mathrm{BH} = \left(3.0 {\pm} 0.3\right) {\times} 10^{9}\ M_\odot$, which is higher than $M_\mathrm{BH}=(1.96^{+0.30}_{-0.13}) {\times} 10^{9} M_\odot$ inferred from CO kinematics (scaled to our distance). When the seven galaxies with $M_\mathrm{BH}$ measurements from both stellar and CO kinematics are compared, we find an intrinsic scatter of 0.28 dex in $M_\mathrm{BH}$ from the two tracers and do not detect statistically significant biases between the two methods in the current data. The implied black hole shadow size (${\approx} 4.7\, \mu{\rm as}$) and the relatively high millimeter flux of NGC 315 makes this galaxy a prime candidate for future horizon-size imaging studies.