Two ten-billion-solar-mass black holes at the centres of giant elliptical galaxies (original) (raw)

• Letter
• Published: 08 December 2011
• Chung-Pei Ma1,
• Karl Gebhardt2,
• Shelley A. Wright1,
• Jeremy D. Murphy2,
• Tod R. Lauer3,
• James R. Graham1,4 &
• …
• Douglas O. Richstone5

Nature volume 480, pages 215–218 (2011)Cite this article

• 3541 Accesses
• 295 Citations
• 83 Altmetric
• Metrics details

Subjects

Abstract

Observational work conducted over the past few decades indicates that all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. Although the luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that some were powered by black holes with masses greater than 10 billion solar masses1,2, the remnants of these objects have not been found in the nearby Universe. The giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts the hitherto most massive known black hole, which has a mass of 6.3 billion solar masses3,4. Here we report that NGC 3842, the brightest galaxy in a cluster at a distance from Earth of 98 megaparsecs, has a central black hole with a mass of 9.7 billion solar masses, and that a black hole of comparable or greater mass is present in NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster (at a distance of 103 megaparsecs). These two black holes are significantly more massive than predicted by linearly extrapolating the widely used correlations between black-hole mass and the stellar velocity dispersion or bulge luminosity of the host galaxy5,6,7,8,9. Although these correlations remain useful for predicting black-hole masses in less massive elliptical galaxies, our measurements suggest that different evolutionary processes influence the growth of the largest galaxies and their black holes.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

$199.00 per year

only $3.90 per issue

Buy this article

• Purchase on SpringerLink
• Instant access to full article PDF

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Additional access options:

• Log in
• Learn about institutional subscriptions
• Read our FAQs
• Contact customer support

Similar content being viewed by others

References

1. Netzer, H. The largest black holes and the most luminous galaxies. Astrophys. J. 583, L5–L8 (2003)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
2. Vestergaard, H., Fan, X., Tremonti, C. A., Osmer, P. S. & Richards, G. T. Mass functions of the active black holes in distant quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 3. Astrophys. J. 674, L1–L4 (2008)
   Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
3. Sargent, W. L. W. et al. Dynamical evidence for a central mass concentration in the galaxy M87. Astrophys. J. 221, 731–744 (1978)
   Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
4. Gebhardt, K. et al. The black hole mass in M87 from Gemini/NIFS adaptive optics observations. Astrophys. J. 729, 119 (2011)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
5. Dressler, A. in Active Galactic Nuclei (eds Osterbrock, D. E. & Miller, J. S. ) 217–232 (IAU Symposium 134, Springer, 1989)
   Book Google Scholar
6. Kormendy, J. & Richstone, D. Inward bound the search for supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 33, 581–624 (1995)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
7. Ferrarese, L. & Merritt, D. A fundamental relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. Astrophys. J. 539, L9–L12 (2000)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
8. Gebhardt, K. et al. A relationship between nuclear black hole mass and galaxy velocity dispersion. Astrophys. J. 539, L13–L16 (2000)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
9. Gültekin, K. et al. The M_BH−_σ and M_BH−_L relations in galactic bulges, and determinations of their intrinsic scatter. Astrophys. J. 698, 198–221 (2009)
   Article ADS Google Scholar
10. Laine, S. et al. Hubble Space Telescope imaging of brightest cluster galaxies. Astron. J. 125, 478–505 (2003)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
11. Postman, M. & Lauer, T. R. Brightest cluster galaxies as standard candles. Astrophys. J. 440, 28–47 (1995)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
12. Schwarzschild, M. A numerical model for a triaxial stellar system in dynamical equilibrium. Astrophys. J. 232, 236–247 (1979)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
13. Loubser, S. I., Sansom, A. E., Sánchez-Blázquez, P., Soechting, I. K. & Bromage, G. E. Radial kinematics of brightest cluster galaxies. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 391, 1009–1028 (2008)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
14. Lauer, T. R. et al. The masses of nuclear black holes in luminous elliptical galaxies and implications for the space density of the most massive black holes. Astrophys. J. 662, 808–834 (2007)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
15. Dalla Bontà, E. et al. The high-mass end of the black hole mass function: mass estimates in brightest cluster galaxies. Astrophys. J. 690, 537–559 (2009)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
16. McConnell, N. J. et al. The black hole mass in brightest cluster galaxy NGC 6086. Astrophys. J. 728, 100 (2011)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
17. Nowak, N. et al. The supermassive black hole of Fornax A. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 391, 1629–1649 (2008)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
18. Di Matteo, T., Volker, S. & Hernquist, L. Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies. Nature 433, 604–607 (2005)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
19. Robertson, B. et al. The evolution of the _M_BH − σ relation. Astrophys. J. 641, 90–102 (2006)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
20. Boylan-Kolchin, M., Ma, C.-P. & Quataert, E. Red mergers and the assembly of massive elliptical galaxies: the fundamental plane and its projections. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 369, 1081–1089 (2006)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
21. Hopkins, P. F., Bundy, K., Hernquist, L. & Ellis, R. S. Observational evidence for the coevolution of galaxy mergers, quasars, and the blue/red galaxy transition. Astrophys. J. 659, 976–996 (2007)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
22. Lauer, T. R., Tremaine, S., Richstone, D. & Faber, S. M. Selection bias in observing the cosmological evolution of the M_BH−_σ and M_BH−_L relationships. Astrophys. J. 670, 249–260 (2007)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
23. Allington-Smith, J. et al. Integral field spectroscopy with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph. I. Design, construction, and testing. Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacif. 114, 892–912 (2002)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
24. Hill, G. J. et al. Design, construction, and performance of VIRUS-P: the prototype of a highly replicated integral field spectrograph for the HET. Proc. Soc. Photo-opt. Instrum. Eng. 7014, 701470 (2008)
    Google Scholar
25. Larkin, J. et al. OSIRIS: a diffraction limited integral field spectrograph for Keck. Proc. Soc. Photo-opt. Instrum. Eng. 6269, 62691A (2006)
    Google Scholar

Download references

Acknowledgements

N.J.M., C.-P.M, K.G. and J.R.G. are supported by the National Science Foundation. C.-P.M. is supported by NASA and by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California, Berkeley. S.A.W. is supported by NASA through a Hubble Fellowship. Data presented here were obtained using the Gemini Observatory, the W. M. Keck Observatory and the McDonald Observatory. The Gemini Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini partnership. The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA. The McDonald Observatory is operated by the University of Texas at Austin. The instrument VIRUS-P was funded by G. and C. Mitchell. Stellar orbit models were run using the facilities at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA
   Nicholas J. McConnell, Chung-Pei Ma, Shelley A. Wright & James R. Graham
2. Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, Austin, 78712, Texas, USA
   Karl Gebhardt & Jeremy D. Murphy
3. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, 85726, Arizona, USA
   Tod R. Lauer
4. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H4, Canada,
   James R. Graham
5. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA
   Douglas O. Richstone

Authors

1. Nicholas J. McConnell
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
2. Chung-Pei Ma
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
3. Karl Gebhardt
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
4. Shelley A. Wright
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
5. Jeremy D. Murphy
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
6. Tod R. Lauer
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
7. James R. Graham
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
8. Douglas O. Richstone
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

N.J.M. carried out the data analysis and modelling. N.J.M, C.-P.M. and S.A.W. wrote the manuscript. C.-P.M. compiled the data for Fig. 3 and oversaw communication among co-authors. S.A.W. analysed OSIRIS data on NGC 3842. K.G. provided GMOS data on NGC 3842 and NGC 4889. K.G. and D.O.R. developed the stellar orbit modelling code. J.D.M. provided VIRUS-P data on NGC 3842. T.R.L. provided photometric data on and image analysis of NGC 3842 and NGC 4889. J.R.G. led the OSIRIS observing campaign for NGC 3842. All authors contributed to the interpretive analysis of the observations and the writing of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence toNicholas J. McConnell or Chung-Pei Ma.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text and Data, Supplementary Figures 1-7 with legends and additional references. (PDF 435 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains data for the line-of-sight velocity distributions at various spatial locations in the central regions of galaxies NGC 3842 and NGC 4889. (TXT 81 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McConnell, N., Ma, CP., Gebhardt, K. et al. Two ten-billion-solar-mass black holes at the centres of giant elliptical galaxies.Nature 480, 215–218 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10636

Download citation

• Received: 15 July 2011
• Accepted: 13 October 2011
• Issue Date: 08 December 2011
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10636

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Editorial Summary

New 'record' for black hole size

At 6.3 billion solar masses, the central black hole in the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87 has been regarded as the most massive known black hole in the Universe for more than three decades. This paper reports two galaxies containing black holes that exceed that figure. NGC 3842 has a central black hole of 9.7 billion solar masses, and NGC 4889 has one of comparable or greater mass. Indications of such massive black holes have existed in the early Universe from luminous quasars but have eluded our detection; these results are the first to connect these early massive black holes to host galaxies in the nearby Universe.

Associated content