NEWSNOTES

Black Holes and Galaxy Bulges: Tightly Wedded Mates

Supermassive black holes are now
believed to lie at the centers of most
Ground-based HST Black-hole Mass
galaxies and they continue to yield
new secrets at a rapid pace. Astronomers NGC 4649
announced an important new finding
about them during Junes semiannual
meeting of the American Astronomical 2 billion Suns
Society in Rochester, New York.
The tally of giant black holes with ac-
curately known masses is up to 33 and
growing, thanks to the Hubble Space
Telescopes Imaging Spectrograph NGC 4291 200 million Suns
(STIS). This instrument can measure the
average orbital velocities of stars much
closer to a galaxys innermost nucleus
than can be done from the ground. (Ad-
ditional improvements in black-hole
mass measurements have also come
from better modeling of the complex or-
bits of stars in galaxy centers.) The holes NGC 2778
cataloged to date weigh from 1 million
to 2.4 billion solar masses. They seem to
inhabit every galaxy that has a central 20 million Suns
bulge the vast, elliptical swarm of
very old stars that constitutes many
galaxies most prominent part.
The bulge and the central black hole
turn out to be intimately related. The
NGC 7457
bigger the bulge, the bigger the hole, to a
surprising degree of precision. Standard
black holes weigh 0.2 percent of the mass
3 million Suns
of a galaxys bulge, declared John Kor-
mendy (University of Texas at Austin) at
the Rochester meeting. Whatever gov-
erned the formation of a galaxys bulge
governed the formation of its central
black hole in well-regulated proportion. 75,000 light-years 3,000 light-years Earths orbit
When the mass of a galaxys bulge is
estimated from its luminosity, the rela- The black-and-white frames at left, taken by ground-based telescopes and scaled to the same
tionship is not very precise. But when the true size, show four galaxies containing central black holes. Small boxes mark the central 3,000
mass is judged by the average random light-years imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope (center). The column at right lists the mass
motions of stars in the bulges outer of the black hole at the heart of each galaxy and illustrates the holes respective diameters. A
parts, noted Karl Gebhardt (Lick Obser- black holes diameter is directly proportional to its mass. Courtesy STScI/Karl Gebhardt.
vatory), the relationship becomes so tight
that any deviation from it is hidden in lack them completely. A nearby example and make quasars. Disk formation is
the measurement errors. Declared Laura is M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangu- wimpy; disks form gently and slowly. The
Ferrarese (UCLA), This relation can lum. The upper limit on any possible close connection between black holes and
predict the mass of the black hole to 50 black hole in its center is now down to bulges, and the complete absence of any
percent from only one low-resolution, just 2,000 solar masses. connection between black holes and
ground-based spectrum measuring the On the other hand, the bulge-to-hole disks, emphasizes how different the two
velocity dispersion of any galaxys bulge. relation applies both to true galactic galaxy-formation processes really are.
The remarkable bulge-to-hole relation bulges dating from the early universe All this has led to a growing opinion
holds true regardless of whether or not a and to younger pseudobulges that can that holes and galaxy bulges formed si-
galaxy also has a disk a spiral pancake form if gas in a disk-only galaxy falls to multaneously, rather than the holes
of gas and younger stars such as the part the center, as in a barred spiral. being born naked and alone soon after
of the Milky Way that we inhabit. Galax- Kormendy summed up the consensus the Big Bang and later gathering galaxies
ies disks seem completely irrelevant to picture. Bulges appear to form early in around them, as some of the AAS atten-
the question of central black holes. violent collapses that make lots of fire- dees were proposing just a few months
Galaxies that are all disk and no bulge works: starbursts that feed black holes ago (May issue, page 22).

28 October 2000 Sky & Telescope 2000 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.