WISDOM project – IV. A molecular gas dynamical measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in NGC 524

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 485:3 (2019) 4359-4374

Authors:

Mark D Smith, Martin Bureau, TA Davis, Michele Cappellari, Lijie Liu, EV North, K Onishi, S Iguchi, M Sarzi

Abstract:

We present high angular resolution (0.3 arcsec or 37 pc) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the CO(2–1) line emission from a central disc in the early-type galaxy NGC 524. This disc is shown to be dynamically relaxed, exhibiting ordered rotation about a compact 1.3 mm continuum source, which we identify as emission from an active supermassive black hole (SMBH). There is a hole at the centre of the disc slightly larger than the SMBH sphere of influence. An azimuthal distortion of the observed velocity field is found to be due to either a position angle warp or radial gas flow over the inner 2. 5. By forward-modelling the observations, we obtain an estimate of the SMBH mass of 4.0+3.5 −2.0 × 108 M, where the uncertainties are at the 3σ level. The uncertainties are dominated by the poorly constrained inclination and the stellar mass-to-light ratio of this galaxy, and our measurement is consistent with the established correlation between SMBH mass and stellar velocity dispersion. Our result is roughly half that of the previous stellar dynamical measurement, but is consistent within the uncertainties of both. We also present and apply a new tool for modelling complex molecular gas distributions.

4MOST Consortium Survey 10: The Time-Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES)

(2019)

Authors:

E Swann, M Sullivan, J Carrick, S Hoenig, I Hook, R Kotak, K Maguire, R McMahon, R Nichol, S Smartt

Bright lenses are easy to find: spectroscopic confirmation of lensed quasars in the Southern Sky

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 483:3 (2019) 3888-3893

Authors:

C Spiniello, A Agnello, AV Sergeyev, T Anguita, Ó Rodríguez, NR Napolitano, C Tortora

The First Tidal Disruption Flare in ZTF: From Photometric Selection to Multi-wavelength Characterization

The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 872:2 (2019) 198

Authors:

Sjoert van Velzen, Suvi Gezari, S Bradley Cenko, Erin Kara, James CA Miller-Jones, Tiara Hung, Joe Bright, Nathaniel Roth, Nadejda Blagorodnova, Daniela Huppenkothen, Lin Yan, Eran Ofek, Jesper Sollerman, Sara Frederick, Charlotte Ward, Matthew J Graham, Rob Fender, Mansi M Kasliwal, Chris Canella, Robert Stein, Matteo Giomi, Valery Brinnel, Jakob van Santen, Jakob Nordin, Eric C Bellm, Richard Dekany, Christoffer Fremling, V Zach Golkhou, Thomas Kupfer, Shrinivas R Kulkarni, Russ R Laher, Ashish Mahabal, Frank J Masci, Adam A Miller, James D Neill, Reed Riddle, Mickael Rigault, Ben Rusholme, Maayane T Soumagnac, Yutaro Tachibana

LOFAR observations of the XMM-LSS field

Astronomy and Astrophysics EDP Sciences 622 (2019) A4

Authors:

Catherine L Hale, W Williams, Matthew Jarvis, MJ Hardcastle, Leah K Morabito, TW Shimwell, C Tasse, PN Best, JJ Harwood, Ian Heywood, I Prandoni, HJA Röttgering, J Sabater, DJB Smith, RJV Weeren

Abstract:

We present observations of the XMM Large-Scale Structure (XMM-LSS) field observed with the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) at 120–168 MHz. Centred at a J2000 declination of −4.5°, this is a challenging field to observe with LOFAR because of its low elevation with respect to the array. The low elevation of this field reduces the effective collecting area of the telescope, thereby reducing sensitivity. This low elevation also causes the primary beam to be elongated in the north-south direction, which can introduce side lobes in the synthesised beam in this direction. However the XMM-LSS field is a key field to study because of the wealth of ancillary information, encompassing most of the electromagnetic spectrum. The field was observed for a total of 12 h from three four-hour LOFAR tracks using the Dutch array. The final image presented encompasses ∼27 deg2, which is the region of the observations with a >50% primary beam response. Once combined, the observations reach a central rms of 280 μJy beam−1 at 144 MHz and have an angular resolution of 7.5 × 8.5″. We present our catalogue of detected sources and investigate how our observations compare to previous radio observations. This includes investigating the flux scale calibration of these observations compared to previous measurements, the implied spectral indices of the sources, the observed source counts and corrections to obtain the true source counts, and finally the clustering of the observed radio sources.