The Detection of Megamasers to Identify Supermassive Black Holes
Abstract
We identified supermassive black holes through the detection of water megamasers in a survey of several hundred galaxies. Spectra were obtained from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, and a Gaussian curve was fit for each galaxy that had an emission line that exceeded three sigma above the noise. The parameters from the Gaussian fit were used to determine the masses of the black holes assuming edge-on accretion disks approximately 0.1 pc in radius. The subsample of megamaser detections provides a target list for future Very Long Baseline Interferometry measurements to map the accretion disks and determine the full set of orbital parameters. This not only provides accurate measurements of black holes masses, but also allows for the accretion disks to be used as standard rulers for determining the geometric distances to these systems, and thus determine the Hubble Constant independent of other steps in the distance ladder.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22345704B