Contribution
Centaurus A's black hole mass – from gas and stars
Presenter: Nadine Neumayer (ESO)
Abstract: I will present the determination of the mass of the supermassive black hole of Centaurus A using high-resolution integral-field observations of both the gas and the stellar kinematics. The observations were obtained with SINFONI at the ESO Very Large Telescope in the near-infrared (K-band), using adaptive optics to correct for the blurring effect of the earth's atmosphere. The data have a spatial resolution of 0.12 arcsec FWHM and high S / N > 80 per spectral pixel. The black hole mass measurements of both tracers, gas and stars, are in excellent agreement and provide one of the cleanest gas versus stars comparisons of a BH mass determination. Moreover, they bring Centaurus A in agreement with the M-σ relation.