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# A 17-billion-solar-mass black hole in a group galaxy with a diffuse core

## Abstract

Quasars are associated with and powered by the accretion of material onto massive black holes; the detection of highly luminous quasars with redshifts greater than z = 6 suggests that black holes of up to ten billion solar masses already existed 13 billion years ago1. Two possible present-day ‘dormant’ descendants of this population of ‘active’ black holes have been found2 in the galaxies NGC 3842 and NGC 4889 at the centres of the Leo and Coma galaxy clusters, which together form the central region of the Great Wall3—the largest local structure of galaxies. The most luminous quasars, however, are not confined to such high-density regions of the early Universe4,5; yet dormant black holes of this high mass have not yet been found outside of modern-day rich clusters. Here we report observations of the stellar velocity distribution in the galaxy NGC 1600—a relatively isolated elliptical galaxy near the centre of a galaxy group at a distance of 64 megaparsecs from Earth. We use orbit superposition models to determine that the black hole at the centre of NGC 1600 has a mass of 17 billion solar masses. The spatial distribution of stars near the centre of NGC 1600 is rather diffuse. We find that the region of depleted stellar density in the cores of massive elliptical galaxies extends over the same radius as the gravitational sphere of influence of the central black holes, and interpret this as the dynamical imprint of the black holes.

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New Astron. 2, 533–554 (1997) Download references ## Acknowledgements C.-P.M., J.E.G. and R.J. are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). J.E.G. is supported by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California, Berkeley. N.J.M. is supported by the Beatrice Watson Parrent Fellowship and Plaskett Fellowship. The spectroscopic data presented here were obtained from the Gemini Observatory and the McDonald Observatory. Gemini is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership. The McDonald Observatory is operated by the University of Texas at Austin. The photometric data presented here are based partly on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA). ## Author information ### Authors and Affiliations Authors ### Contributions J.T. developed and carried out the stellar orbit modelling. J.T. and C.-P.M. wrote the manuscript. C.-P.M. led the Gemini observation proposal. J.E.G. performed the stellar population analysis. N.J.M. and R.J. reduced the spectroscopic data. J.P.B. provided photometric analysis. All authors contributed to the MASSIVE Survey, the kinematic extractions, the interpretive analysis of the observations and the writing of the paper. ### Corresponding authors Correspondence to Jens Thomas or Chung-Pei Ma. ## Ethics declarations ### Competing interests The authors declare no competing financial interests. ## Extended data figures and tables ### Extended Data Figure 1 The MBH/σ correlation. The black-hole masses, MBH, and host-galaxy velocity dispersions, σe, of the 21 core galaxies (red dots, with 1σ error bars) shown in Figs 3 and 4. The dashed, dotted and solid lines show recent fits (from refs 10, 11 and 12, respectively) to the MBHσ correlation for all early-type galaxies (including both cored and coreless galaxies) and classical bulges with dynamically measured MBH. The black hole in NGC 1600 is ten times more massive than would be expected given the galaxy’s velocity dispersion (σe = 293 km s−1). ### Extended Data Figure 2 Surface brightness profile of NGC 1600. a, The circularized surface brightness distribution of NGC 1600 (filled circles) and the best-fit core-Sérsic model (red line; the best-fit parameters of the core-Sérsic function are quoted). The blue dotted line indicates the inward extrapolation of the outer Sérsic component. From the integrated difference between the blue and the red curves, we derive a ‘light deficit’ of Ldef = 9.47 × 109L. b, The difference between the data points in panel a and the core-Sérsic fit. Surface brightnesses are given in mag arcsec−2 in the R-band. ### Extended Data Figure 3 Best-fit MBH values for NGC 1600 and confidence intervals. The relative likelihood of different MBH values, marginalized over M/L, rDM and vDM (shaded area; the likelihood is arbitrarily scaled). The best-fit values and confidence intervals are derived from the cumulative likelihood distribution43 and indicated by the vertical lines. The red line shows , where χ2(MBH) is the minimum of all models with the same MBH, but different M/L, rDM and vDM; is the minimum of χ2(MBH) over MBH. ### Extended Data Figure 4 Stellar velocity data and best-fit dynamical model. These data are shown for NGC 1600 (filled grey and orange circles, with 1σ error bars), together with the best-fit model (smoothed over 0.05 dex in log radius; solid red curves). Observed LOSVDs of galaxies are approximately Gaussian and are commonly parameterized by a Gauss–Hermite series expansion62,63. The mean stellar velocity v (in a) and velocity dispersion σ (in b) correspond to the centre and the width, respectively, of the best Gaussian approximation. Higher-order Hermite coefficients hn (in cf) quantify deviations from a pure Gaussian LOSVD. Most data points at r < 4 arcsec came from our GMOS IFS observations (orange dots). Data at larger radii came from our Mitchell IFS observations (grey dots). ### Extended Data Figure 5 The enclosed mass of NGC 1600. a, The enclosed stellar mass (M, blue), dark-halo mass (MDM, red), black-hole mass (MBH, grey) and combined total mass (black) obtained in our model from the smallest resolved radius (point-spread-function, PSF, size) out to 20 kpc (Mitchell IFU size). b, An illustration of the excessive M/L gradient (dotted pale blue curve) that would be required for a hypothetical population of unresolved central dwarf stars to explain 10% of NGC 1600’s measured MBH. The stellar mass-to-light ratio would have to increase by about a factor of ten (dotted pale blue curve) over our best-fit constant value (dashed blue curve). Observations of other galaxies suggest that extreme populations of dwarf stars can increase M/L by a factor of up to three. ### Extended Data Figure 6 The anisotropy of stellar orbits in core galaxies. In NGC 1600 (red line) and similar galaxies with cores12,18 (grey lines), the stellar velocity distribution is anisotropic. The anisotropy parameter, , is positive when most of the stars move along radially stretched orbits, and negative when the stellar orbits are predominantly tangential. Inside the diffuse, low-surface-brightness core region (r ≤ rb), tangential motions dominate. The shaded area indicates the range of anisotropies found in numerical N-body simulations of the core scouring mechanism58,64. ## PowerPoint slides ### PowerPoint slide for Fig. 1 ### PowerPoint slide for Fig. 2 ### PowerPoint slide for Fig. 3 ### PowerPoint slide for Fig. 4 ## Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions ## About this article ### Cite this article Thomas, J., Ma, CP., McConnell, N. et al. A 17-billion-solar-mass black hole in a group galaxy with a diffuse core. Nature 532, 340–342 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17197 Download citation • Received: • Accepted: • Published: • Issue Date: • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17197 ## This article is cited by • ### A study of the scaling relation$M_{\bullet }\propto R_{e}\sigma ^{3}\$ for supermassive black holes and an update of the corresponding theoretical model

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