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Session 111 - Massive Black Holes and Dynamics of Galaxy Cores.
Oral session, Thursday, January 16
Harbour A,
We use a Hubble Space Telescope image combined with nuclear and flanking spectra of the galaxy NGC 3377 (E5, M_V = -19.7), together with somewhat lower resolution ground--based data from Hawaii, to determine the stellar kinematics of the central region of the galaxy. Because the galaxy is apparently very flat it must be highly inclined. We model the galaxy using an axisymmetric, fully general (3-integral) orbit-based maximum entropy program, which permits a complete exploration of all possible configurations in phase space consistent with a specified mass and light distribution. We considered intrinsic E5 models at 90 \deg inclination and E6 models at 71 \deg.
All equilibrium models with satisfactory fits to the observations contain a massive central dark point mass in the range 0.5 - 2. \times 10^8 \Msun. Models without a massive black hole cannot reproduce the rapid observed rotation seen at 0. \arcsec 3 from the center in the HST data. Models matching the data have approximately isotropic distribution functions.
The Nuker team was supported by HST data analysis funds through grant GO-02600.01-87A and by NSERC.
