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Black Hole

Lensing of space time around a black hole. At Oxford we study black holes observationally and theoretically on all size and time scales - it is some of our core work.

Credit: ALAIN RIAZUELO, IAP/UPMC/CNRS. CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE IMAGES.

Michele Cappellari

Professor of Astrophysics

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Galaxy formation and evolution
  • Extremely Large Telescope
michele.cappellari@physics.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: 01865 (2)73647
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 755
  • About
  • Publications

The Einstein Cross: Constraint on dark matter from stellar dynamics and gravitational lensing

Astrophysical Journal 719:2 (2010) 1481-1496

Authors:

G Van De Ven, J Falcón-Barroso, RM McDermid, M Cappellari, BW Miller, PT De Zeeuw

Abstract:

We present two-dimensional line-of-sight stellar kinematics of the lens galaxy in the Einstein Cross, obtained with the GEMINI 8 m telescope, using the GMOS integral-field spectrograph. The stellar kinematics extend to a radius of 4″ (with 0.″2 spaxels), covering about two-thirds of the effective (or half-light) radius Re - 6″ of this early-type spiral galaxy at redshift zl ≃ 0.04, of which the bulge is lensing a background quasar at redshift zs ≃ 1.7. The velocity map shows regular rotation up to ∼100 km s-1 around the minor axis of the bulge, consistent with axisymmetry. The velocity dispersion map shows a weak gradient increasing toward a central (R < 1″) value of σ0 = 170 ± 9 km s-1. We deproject the observed surface brightness from Hubble Space Telescope imaging to obtain a realistic luminosity density of the lens galaxy, which in turn is used to build axisymmetric dynamical models that fit the observed kinematic maps. We also construct a gravitational lens model that accurately fits the positions and relative fluxes of the four quasar images. We combine these independent constraints from stellar dynamics and gravitational lensing to study the total mass distribution in the inner parts of the lens galaxy. We find that the resulting luminous and total mass distribution are nearly identical around the Einstein radius Re = 0″.89, with a slope that is close to isothermal, but which becomes shallower toward the center if indeed mass follows light. The dynamical model fits to the observed kinematic maps result in a total mass-to-light ratio γdyn = 3.7 ± 0.5 γ⊙,I (in the I band). This is consistent with the Einstein mass Me = 1.54 × 1010 M⊙ divided by the (projected) luminosity within Re, which yields a total mass-to-light ratio of γE = 3.4 γ⊙,I, with an error of at most a few percent. We estimate from stellar population model fits to colors of the lens galaxy a stellar mass-to-light ratio γ* from 2.8 to 4.1 γ⊙,I. Although a constant dark matter fraction of 20% is not excluded, dark matter may play no significant role in the bulge of this ∼L* early-type spiral galaxy. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society.

The Tully-Fisher relations of early-type spiral and S0 galaxies

(2010)

Authors:

Michael J Williams, Martin Bureau, Michele Cappellari

Early-type galaxies in different environments: an HI view

(2010)

Authors:

Tom Oosterloo, Raffaella Morganti, Alison Crocker, Eva Juette, Michele Cappellari, Tim de Zeeuw, Davor Krajnovic, Richard McDermid, Harald Kuntschner, Marc Sarzi, Anne-Marie Weijmans

Measuring the low mass end of the Mbh - sigma relation

AIP Conference Proceedings AIP Publishing 1240 (2010) 215

Authors:

D Krajnovic, Rm McDermid, Michele Cappellari, Roger Davies

Abstract:

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 (Mbh) 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 Mbh even if the spatial resolution of the observations are up to a few times larger than the sphere of influence of the black hole.

The SAURON project - XVII. Stellar population analysis of the absorption line strength maps of 48 early-type galaxies

(2010)

Authors:

Harald Kuntschner, Eric Emsellem, Roland Bacon, Michele Cappellari, Roger L Davies, P Tim de Zeeuw, Jesús Falcón-Barroso, Davor Krajnović, Richard M McDermid, Reynier F Peletier, Marc Sarzi, Kristen L Shapiro, Remco CE van den Bosch, Glenn van de Ven

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