A Supermassive Black Hole in a Diminutive Ultracompact Dwarf Galaxy Discovered with JWST/NIRSpec+IFU

The Astrophysical Journal Letters Pub Date : 2025-09-17 DOI:10.3847/2041-8213/ae028e

Matthew A. Taylor, Behzad Tahmasebzadeh, Solveig Thompson, Eugene Vasiliev, Monica Valluri, Michael J. Drinkwater, Patrick Côté, Laura Ferrarese, Joel Roediger, Holger Baumgardt, Misty C. Bentz, Kristen Dage, Eric W. Peng, Drew Lapeer, Chengze Liu, Zach Sumners, Kaixiang Wang, Vivienne Baldassare, John P. Blakeslee, Youkyung Ko and Tyrone E. Woods

{"title":"A Supermassive Black Hole in a Diminutive Ultracompact Dwarf Galaxy Discovered with JWST/NIRSpec+IFU","authors":"Matthew A. Taylor, Behzad Tahmasebzadeh, Solveig Thompson, Eugene Vasiliev, Monica Valluri, Michael J. Drinkwater, Patrick Côté, Laura Ferrarese, Joel Roediger, Holger Baumgardt, Misty C. Bentz, Kristen Dage, Eric W. Peng, Drew Lapeer, Chengze Liu, Zach Sumners, Kaixiang Wang, Vivienne Baldassare, John P. Blakeslee, Youkyung Ko and Tyrone E. Woods","doi":"10.3847/2041-8213/ae028e","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The integral-field unit mode of the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec+IFU) mounted on the James Webb Space Telescope has now enabled kinematic studies of smaller and less massive compact stellar systems in which to search for central massive black holes (BHs) than ever before. We present here the first such detection using NIRSpec+IFU in its highest resolution (R ∼ 2700) mode. We report the detection of a central BH with mass = 2.1 ± 1.1 × 106M⊙ (1σ uncertainties) in UCD736 orbiting within the Virgo galaxy cluster. Schwarzschild modeling of the 1D kinematic profile rules out a zero-mass central BH at the 3σ level; however, two other independent modeling approaches fail to rule out a zero-mass BH at >1σ significance. The presence of such a massive BH strongly argues against a globular cluster origin of this ultracompact dwarf galaxy (UCD), and rather suggests a tidally stripped formation route from a former ≳109M⊙ dwarf galaxy host. This represents the detection of a BH in the most compact (rh ≈ 15 pc) stellar system to date, with a corresponding to ∼8% of the system’s stellar mass, roughly in line with previously reported UCD BH detections and comparable to the BH detected in the compact elliptical galaxy NGC4486B.","PeriodicalId":501814,"journal":{"name":"The Astrophysical Journal Letters","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Astrophysical Journal Letters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae028e","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

The integral-field unit mode of the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec+IFU) mounted on the James Webb Space Telescope has now enabled kinematic studies of smaller and less massive compact stellar systems in which to search for central massive black holes (BHs) than ever before. We present here the first such detection using NIRSpec+IFU in its highest resolution (R ∼ 2700) mode. We report the detection of a central BH with mass = 2.1 ± 1.1 × 106M⊙ (1σ uncertainties) in UCD736 orbiting within the Virgo galaxy cluster. Schwarzschild modeling of the 1D kinematic profile rules out a zero-mass central BH at the 3σ level; however, two other independent modeling approaches fail to rule out a zero-mass BH at >1σ significance. The presence of such a massive BH strongly argues against a globular cluster origin of this ultracompact dwarf galaxy (UCD), and rather suggests a tidally stripped formation route from a former ≳109M⊙ dwarf galaxy host. This represents the detection of a BH in the most compact (rh ≈ 15 pc) stellar system to date, with a corresponding to ∼8% of the system’s stellar mass, roughly in line with previously reported UCD BH detections and comparable to the BH detected in the compact elliptical galaxy NGC4486B.

查看原文本刊更多论文

JWST/NIRSpec+IFU在一个小型超紧凑矮星系中发现了一个超大质量黑洞

安装在詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜上的近红外光谱仪（NIRSpec+IFU）的积分场单元模式，现在可以对体积更小、质量更小的紧凑型恒星系统进行运动学研究，以寻找中心大质量黑洞（BHs）。我们在这里首次使用NIRSpec+IFU在其最高分辨率（R ~ 2700）模式下进行此类检测。我们报告了在室女座星系团内轨道运行的UCD736中检测到质量= 2.1±1.1 × 106M⊙（1σ不确定度）的中心黑洞。一维运动剖面的史瓦西模型排除了3σ水平上的零质量中心黑洞；然而，另外两种独立的建模方法都不能排除零质量黑洞在bbbb1 σ显著性下的存在。如此大质量黑洞的存在有力地反驳了这个超紧凑矮星系（UCD）的球状星团起源，而更确切地说，这是一个潮汐剥离的形成路线，来自一个以前的约109M⊙矮星系宿主。这代表了迄今为止在最致密（rh≈15 pc）恒星系统中检测到的黑洞，对应于系统恒星质量的8%，大致与先前报道的UCD黑洞检测一致，与致密椭圆星系NGC4486B中检测到的黑洞相当。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

自引率

0.00%

发文量