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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 2(651), p. 775-781, 2006

DOI: 10.1086/507417

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A Reverberation-Based Mass for the Central Black Hole in NGC 4151

Journal article published in 2006 by Misty C. Bentz, Kelly D. Denney, Edward M. Cackett, Matthias Dietrich, Jeffrey K. J. Fogel, Himel Ghosh, Keith Horne, Charles Kuehn, Takeo Minezaki, Christopher A. Onken ORCID, Bradley M. (Bradley M.) Peterson, Richard W. Pogge, Vladimir I. Pronik, Douglas O. Richstone, Sergey G. Sergeev and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We have undertaken a new ground-based monitoring campaign to improve the estimates of the mass of the central black hole in NGC 4151. We measure the lag time of the broad H beta line response compared to the optical continuum at 5100 A and find a lag of 6.6 (+1.1/-0.8) days. We combine our data with the recent reanalysis of UV emission lines by Metzroth et al. to calculate a weighted mean of the black hole mass, M_BH = 4.57 (+0.57/-0.47) x 10^7 M_sun. The absolute calibration of the black hole mass is based on normalization of the AGN black hole mass - stellar velocity dispersion (M_BH - sigma_*) relationship to that of quiescent galaxies by Onken et al. The scatter in the M_BH - sigma_* relationship suggests that reverberation-mapping based mass measurements are typically uncertain by a factor of 3-4.