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Upper limits on the mass of supermassive black holes from HST/STIS archival data

E. M. Corsini·A. Beifiori·E. Dalla Bonta`·A. Pizzella·L. Coccato·M. Sarzi·F. Bertola
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Abstract

The growth of supermassive black holes (SBHs) appears to be closely linked with the formation of spheroids. There is a pressing need to acquire better statistics on SBH masses, since the existing samples are preferentially weighted toward early-type galaxies with very massive SBHs. With this motivation we started a project aimed at measuring upper limits on the mass of the SBHs in the center of all the nearby galaxies (D<100 Mpc) for which STIS/G750M spectra are available in the HST archive. These upper limits will be derived by modeling the central emission-line widths observed in the Halpha region over an aperture of ~0.1''. Here we present our results for a subsample of 20 S0-Sb galaxies within 20 Mpc.

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E. M. Corsini, A. Beifiori, E. Dalla Bonta`, A. Pizzella, L. Coccato, M. Sarzi, F. Bertola. 2006-10-20. Upper limits on the mass of supermassive black holes from HST/STIS archival data. https://doi.org/10.1017/s174392130700539x

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