POX 52: A Dwarf Seyfert 1 Galaxy with an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

By A. Barth, Luis C. Ho, R. Rutledge, W. Sargent. 2004

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We describe new optical images and spectra of POX 52, a dwarf galaxy with an active nucleus that was originally detected in the POX objective-prism survey. While POX 52 was originally thought to be a Seyfert 2 galaxy, the new data reveal an emission-line spectrum very similar to that of the dwarf Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4395, with broad components to the permitted line profiles, and we classify POX 52 as a Seyfert 1 galaxy. The host galaxy appears to be a dwarf elliptical, and its brightness profile is best fit by a Sérsic model with an index of 3.6 ± 0.2 and a total magnitude of MV = -17.6. Applying mass-luminosity-line width scaling relations to estimate the black hole mass from the broad Hβ line width and nonstellar continuum luminosity, we find MBH ≈ 1.6 × 105 M☉. The stellar velocity dispersion in the host galaxy, measured from the Ca II λ8498, 8542 lines, is 36 ± 5 km s-1, also suggestive of a black hole mass of order 105 M☉. Further searches for active nuclei in dwarf galaxies can provide unique constraints on the demographics of black holes in the mass range below 106 M☉.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Stellar Remnants in Galactic Nuclei: Mass Segregation (2006, background): “The lowest mass we consider, 104 M , encompasses that of the smallestMBHdetectedwith some confidence in a galactic center so far (Barth et al. 2004, 2005).”
The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, background): “It is possible that these more distant systems also obey anMBH − Lbulge relation with a nuclear star cluster, and POX 52 may show evidence of nucleation fromHST observations (C. J. Thornton et al., in preparation), but inge - eral it is not possible to predict nuclear cluster luminosity from galaxy ”
Fueling Low-Level AGN Activity through Stochastic Accretion of Cold Gas (2006, unknown): “In fact, existing observations by Barth et al. (2004, 2005) and Greene & Ho (2005a) favor a change in slope, but the large observational errors make this only a∼ 1−2σ effect.”
How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems (2007, background): “1010M⊙, the central object with which galaxies correlate may be either intermediate mass BHs in dwarf galaxies (Filippenko & Ho 2003; Barth et al. 2004, 2005; Greene & Ho 2006) or central massive star clusters (Ferrarese et al. 2006; Graham & Driver 2007).”
The black hole mass – spheroid luminosity relation (2007, methodology): “We do not include the type 1 Seyfert galaxy POX 52 as it appears to require a (yet to be performed) bulge/disc decomposition, with the disc accounting for the excess flux from 4 to 10 arcsec seen in the Sérsic fit of Barth et al. (2004).”
An Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Globular Cluster G1: Improved Significance from New Keck and Hubble Space Telescope Observations (2005, background): “These are NGC 4395 (Filippenko & Ho 2003) and POX 52 (Barth et al. 2004).”
A ∼50,000 M⊙ SOLAR MASS BLACK HOLE IN THE NUCLEUS OF RGG 118 (2015, background): “We also show the well-studied dwarf AGN POX 52 (Barth et al. 2004; Thornton et al. 2008) and NGC 4395 (Filippenko & Ho 2003) (turquoise diamonds).”
Formation of supermassive black holes (2010, background): “It is believed to contain a MBH of mass MBH ∼ 105M (Barth et al, 2004).”
The evolution of massive black hole seeds (2007, background): “While current data in the low mass regime is scant (Barth et al. 2004; Greene & Ho 2007), future instruments and surveys are likely to probe this region of parameter space with significantly higher sensitivity.”
On the correlations between galaxy properties and supermassive black hole mass (2011, background): “The few bulgeless galaxies known to host an SMBH (NGC 4395, Filippenko & Ho 2003; POX 52, Barth et al. 2004; NGC 1042, Shields et al. 2008) are an exception to this scenario, which is supported by cases like M33.”
A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, background): “In fact, there are two well-studie AGNs in dwarf galaxies: NGC 4395 is a bulgeless spiral galaxy (Filippenko & Sargent 1989), while POX 52 (Kunth et al. 1987) is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Barth et al. 2004)2.”
N-body modelling of globular clusters: masses, mass-to-light ratios and intermediate-mass black holes (2016, background): “Barth et al. (2004) for example found a 105 M⊙ black hole at the center of the Seyfert 1 galaxy POX 52 based on the broadness of the Hβ profile.”
The Afterglow of Massive Black Hole Coalescence (2004, background): “Barth et al. (2004) recently studied the dwarf galaxy POX 52, which appears to contain a 1.6×105M⊙ black hole accreting at about the Eddington rate (Greene & Ho 2004 list other similar candidates).”
Nuclear Activity in Nearby Galaxies (2008, background): “Although less common in low-mass systems, central BHs also have been identified in some late-type, even dwarf, galaxies (Filippenko & Ho 2003; Barth et al. 2004; Greene & Ho 2004, 2007b; Dong et al. 2007; Greene, Ho & Barth 2008).”
Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes (2017, background): “…indicate the presence of an AGN with a BH mass of MBH ∼ 3× 105 M estimated from the width of the broad emission lines under the assumption that the gas is virialized (Filippenko & Ho 2003; Barth et al. 2004; Moran et al. 2005; Peterson et al. 2005; Vaughan et al. 2005; Thornton et al. 2008).”
Hubble Space Telescope STIS Spectra of Nuclear Star Clusters in Spiral Galaxies: Dependence of Age and Mass on Hubble Type (2006, background): “And we do know that some supermassive BHs (as revealed by AGN activity) exist in very late-type galaxies such as the Sd spiral NGC4395 (Filippenko & Ho 2003; Peterson et al. 2005) and the dE galaxy Pox 52 (Barth et al. 2004) that probably do not have bulges.”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, methodology): “…is not in the SDSS footprint, we estimate the galaxy stellar mass using B, V and K-band photometry (corrected for the AGN contribution) provided by Barth et al. (2004) and Thornton et al. (2008) with the following colordependent mass-to-light ratio from Zibetti et al. (2009): log(M/LK) = 1.176(B…”