High angular resolution spectroscopy of NGC 1277

In this paper, we present Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrometer observations assisted by adaptive optics. We map out the galaxy's stellar kinematics within ~440pc of the nucleus with an angular resolution that allows us to probe well within the region where the potential from the black hole dominates.

We find that the stellar velocity dispersion rises dramatically, reaching ~550km/s at the center. Through orbit-based, stellar-dynamical models we obtain a black hole mass of (4.9+/-1.6)x10^9^M_{sun}_ (1{sigma} uncertainties). Although the black hole mass measurement is smaller by a factor of ~3 compared to previous claims based on large-scale kinematics, NGC 1277 does indeed contain one of the most massive black holes detected to date, and the black hole mass is an order of magnitude larger than expectations from the empirical relation between black hole mass and galaxy luminosity.