Search for: All records

We present a new method to infer the 3D luminosity distributions of edge-on barred galaxies with boxy-peanut/X (BP/X) shaped structures from their 2D surface brightness distributions. Our method relies on forward modelling of newly introduced parametric 3D density distributions for the BP/X bar, disc and other components using an existing image fitting software package (imfit). We validate our method using an N-body simulation of a barred disc galaxy with a moderately strong BP/X shape. For fixed orientation angles, the derived 3D BP/X-shaped density distribution is shown to yield a gravitational potential that is accurate to at least 5 per cent and forces that are accurate to at least 15 per cent, with average errors being $\sim 1.5~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for both. When additional quantities of interest, such as the orientation of the bar to the line of sight, its pattern speed, and the stellar mass-to-light ratio are unknown they can be recovered to high accuracy by providing the parametric density distribution to the Schwarzschild modelling code FORSTAND. We also explore the ability of our models to recover the mass of the central supermassive black hole. This method is the first to be able to accurately recover both the orientation of the bar to the line of sight and its pattern speed when the disc is perfectly edge-on.

We present a new constraint on the mass of the black hole in the active S0 galaxy NGC 5273. Due to the proximity of the galaxy at 16.6 ± 2.1 Mpc, we were able to resolve and extract the bulk motions of stars near the central black hole using adaptive-optics-assisted observations with the Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph, as well as constrain the large-scale kinematics using archival Spectroscopic Areal Unit for Research and Optical Nebulae spectroscopy. High-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging allowed us to generate a surface-brightness decomposition, determine approximate mass-to-light ratios for the bulge and disk, and obtain an estimate for the disk inclination. We constructed an extensive library of dynamical models using the Schwarzschild orbit-superposition code FORSTAND, exploring a range of disk and bulge shapes, halo masses, etc. We determined a black hole mass ofM_•= [0.5–2] × 10⁷M_⊙, where the low side of the range is in agreement with the reverberation mapping measurement ofM_•= [4.7 ± 1.6] × 10⁶M_⊙. NGC 5273 is one of the few nearby galaxies that hosts a broad-lined active galactic nucleus, allowing a crucial comparison of black hole masses derived from independent mass-measurement techniques.