The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping

Denney, Kelly D.; Bentz, Misty C.; Peterson, Bradley M.; Pogge, Richard W.; Cackett, Edward M.; Dietrich, Matthias; Fogel, Jeffrey K. J.; Ghosh, Himel; Horne, Keith; Kuehn, Charles; Minezaki, Takeo; Onken, Christopher A.; Pronik, Vladimir I.; Richstone, Douglas O.; Sergeev, Sergey G.; Vestergaard, Marianne; Walker, Matthew G.; Yoshii, Yuzuru

The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping

Authors

Description

We present new observations leading to an improved black hole mass estimate for the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 as part of a reverberation-mapping campaign conducted at the MDM Observatory. Cross-correlation analysis of the H_beta emission-line light curve with the optical continuum light curve reveals an emission-line time delay of 3.73 (+-0.75) days. By combining this time delay with the H_beta line width, we derive a central black hole mass of M_BH = 9.8(+-2.1)x10^6 M_sun, an improvement in precision of a factor of several over past results.
22 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ