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G. A. Bower, R. F. Green (NOAO/KPNO), K. Gebhardt (UC-Santa Cruz), R. Bender (Universitäts-Sternwarte, München, Germany), A. S. Wilson (U. Maryland), D. O. Richstone (U. Michigan), T. M. Heckman (JHU), B. M. Peterson (Ohio State Univ.), STIS Team
Both NGC~1023 and M81 are interesting galaxies in the search for supermassive black holes (BHs). NGC~1023 is an SB0 galaxy of moderate luminosity that has a power-law surface brightness profile and rapid rotation in the central few hundred pc. M81 has a similar central structure and, more importantly, is one of the nearest galaxies with a mildly active nucleus. Since the goals of the search for BHs are to understand their significance in galaxy bulge formation and to assess their role in the AGN phenomenon, both galaxies are interesting targets for study with STIS.
The stellar dynamics of both galaxies have been measured using STIS to obtain long-slit spectroscopy covering the calcium triplet absorption lines. The NGC~1023 data were obtained during the STIS GTO project, while the M81 data are from a GO project by Bower et al. The stellar dynamics have been measured from the spectra using the FCQ method (Bender 1990), and axisymmetric dynamical models with three integrals of motion (using the technique of Gebhardt et al.~2000) are being constructed.
The current status of the analysis of each galaxy will be presented.
We acknowledge funding from NASA to the STIS Science Team and through Grant No.~GO-7350 from STScI. Ground-based observations were obtained from KPNO, which is operated by AURA under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, and from the Michigan Dartmouth MIT Observatory.