@article{f14f1975376c455f93c2e20b396555d6,
title = "A fundamental relation between compact stellar nuclei, supermassive black holes, and their host galaxies",
abstract = " Imaging surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have shown that ≈50%–80% of low- and intermediate-luminosity galaxies contain a compact stellar nucleus at their center, regardless of host galaxy morphological type. We combine HST imaging for early-type galaxies from the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey with ground-based long-slit spectra from KPNO to show that the masses of compact stellar nuclei in Virgo Cluster galaxies obey a tight correlation with the masses of the host galaxies. The same correlation is obeyed by the supermassive black holes (SBHs) found in predominantly massive galaxies. The compact stellar nuclei in the Local Group galaxies M33 and NGC 205 are also found to fall along this same scaling relation. These results indicate that a generic by-product of galaxy formation is the creation of a central massive object (CMO)—either an SBH or a compact stellar nucleus—that contains a mean fraction, ≈0.2%, of the total galactic mass. In galaxies with masses greater than M gal ∼ a few # 10 10 M,, SBHs appear to be the dominant mode of CMO formation.",
keywords = "Black hole physics, Galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, Galaxies: kinematics and dynamics, Galaxies: nuclei, Galaxies: structure, cD",
author = "Laura Ferrarese and Patrick C{\^o}t{\'e} and {Dalla Bont{\`a}}, Elena and Peng, {Eric W.} and David Merritt and Andr{\'e}s Jord{\'a}n and Blakeslee, {John P.} and Monica Ha{\c s}egan and Simona Mei and Slawomir Piatek and Tonry, {John L.} and West, {Michael J.}",
note = "Funding Information: 1 Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. 2Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7, Canada; laura.ferrarese@ nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. 3Visiting Astronomer, KPNO/NOAO, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the NSF. 4 Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universit{\'a} di Padova, Vicolo dell{\textquoteright}Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padua, Italy. 5Department of Physics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 84 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623. 6European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching, Germany. 7Astrophysics, Denys Wilkinson Building, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK. 8 Department of Physics, Washington State University, Webster Hall 1245, Pullman, WA 99164-2814. 9Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08854. 10Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-2686. 11 Department of Physics, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102. 12Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822. 13Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI 96720. Funding Information: We thank the referee, Alister Graham, for many useful comments. Support for program GO-9401 was provided through a grant from STScI, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.",
year = "2006",
month = jun,
day = "10",
doi = "10.1086/505388",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "644",
pages = "L21--L24",
journal = "Astrophysical Journal Letters",
issn = "2041-8205",
publisher = "IOP Publishing Ltd.",
number = "1",
}