The supermassive black hole in the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 5252

We present results from HST/STIS long-slit spectroscopy of the gas motions in the nuclear region of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 5252. The observed velocity field is consistent with gas in regular rotation with superposed localized patches of disturbed gas. The dynamics of the circumnuclear gas can be accurately reproduced by adding to the stellar mass component a compact dark mass of MBH = 0.95 (-0.45;+1.45) 10E9 M(sun), very likely a supermassive black hole. Contrarily to results obtained in similar studies rotational broadening is sufficient to reproduce also the behaviour of line widths. The MBH estimated for NGC 5252 is in good agreement with the correlation between MBH and bulge mass. The comparison with the MBH vs sigma relationship is less stringent (mostly due to the relatively large error in sigma); NGC 5252 is located above the best fit line by between 0.3 and 1.2 dex, i.e. 1 - 4 times the dispersion of the correlation. Both the galaxy's and MBH of NGC 5252 are substantially larger than those usually estimated for Seyfert galaxies but, on the other hand, they are typical of radio-quiet quasars. Combining the determined MBH with the hard X-ray luminosity, we estimate that NGC 5252 is emitting at a fraction ~ 0.005 of L(Edd). In this sense, this active nucleus appears to be a quasar relic, now probably accreting at a low rate, rather than a low black hole mass counterpart of a QSO.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Relation between dust and radio luminosity in optically selected early type galaxies

We have surveyed an optical/IR selected sample of nearby E/S0 galaxies with and without nuclear dust structures with the VLA at 3.6 cm to a sensitivity of 100 $\mu$Jy. We can construct a Radio Luminosity Function (RLF) of these galaxies to ~10^19 W/Hz and find that ~50% of these galaxies have AGNs at this level. The space density of these AGNs equals that of starburst galaxies at this luminosity. Several dust-free galaxies have low luminosity radio cores, and their RLF is not significantly less than that of the dusty galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

HST/ACS observations of shell galaxies: inner shells, shell colours and dust

AIM:Learn more about the origin of shells and dust in early type galaxies. METHOD: V-I colours of shells and underlying galaxies are derived, using HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) data. A galaxy model is made locally in wedges and subtracted to determine shell profiles and colours. We applied Voronoi binning to our data to get smoothed colour maps of the galaxies. Comparison with N-body simulations from the literature gives more insight to the origin of the shell features. Shell positions and dust characteristics are inferred from model galaxy subtracted images. RESULT: The ACS images reveal shells well within the effective radius in some galaxies (at 1.7 kpc in the case of NGC 5982). In some cases, strong nuclear dust patches prevent detection of inner shells. Most shells have colours which are similar to the underlying galaxy. Some inner shells are redder than the galaxy. All six shell galaxies show out of dynamical equilibrium dust features, like lanes or patches, in their central regions. Our detection rate for dust in the shell ellipticals is greater than that found from HST archive data for a sample of normal early-type galaxies, at the 95% confidence level. CONCLUSIONS: The merger model describes better the shell distributions and morphologies than the interaction model. Red shell colours are most likely due to the presence of dust and/or older stellar populations. The high prevalence and out of dynamical equilibrium morphologies of the central dust features point towards external influences being responsible for visible dust features in early type shell galaxies. Inner shells are able to manifest themselves in relatively old shell systems.Comment: accepted by A&A; 36 Figures, 25 pages. A version with full resolution Figures can be found here: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~sikkema/shells.p

Star formation in z>1 3CR host galaxies as seen by Herschel

We present Herschel (PACS and SPIRE) far-infrared (FIR) photometry of a complete sample of z>1 3CR sources, from the Herschel GT project The Herschel Legacy of distant radio-loud AGN (PI: Barthel). Combining these with existing Spitzer photometric data, we perform an infrared (IR) spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis of these landmark objects in extragalactic research to study the star formation in the hosts of some of the brightest active galactic nuclei (AGN) known at any epoch. Accounting for the contribution from an AGN-powered warm dust component to the IR SED, about 40% of our objects undergo episodes of prodigious, ULIRG-strength star formation, with rates of hundreds of solar masses per year, coeval with the growth of the central supermassive black hole. Median SEDs imply that the quasar and radio galaxy hosts have similar FIR properties, in agreement with the orientation-based unification for radio-loud AGN. The star-forming properties of the AGN hosts are similar to those of the general population of equally massive non-AGN galaxies at comparable redshifts, thus there is no strong evidence of universal quenching of star formation (negative feedback) within this sample. Massive galaxies at high redshift may be forming stars prodigiously, regardless of whether their supermassive black holes are accreting or not.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

Spectroscopy of the near-nuclear regions of Cygnus A: estimating the mass of the supermassive black hole

We use a combination of high spatial resolution optical and near-IR spectroscopic data to make a detailed study of the kinematics of the NLR gas in the near-nuclear regions of the powerful, FRII radio galaxy Cygnus A (z=0.0560), with the overall goal of placing limits on the mass of any supermassive black hole in the core. Our K-band infrared observations (0.75 arcsec seeing) -- taken with NIRSPEC on the Keck II telescope -- show a smooth rotation pattern across the nucleus in the Paschen alpha and H_2 emission lines along a slit position (PA180) close to perpendicular to the radio axis, however, there is no evidence for such rotation along the radio axis (PA105). Higher spatial resolution observations of the [OIII]5007 emission line -- taken with STIS on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) -- confirm the general rotation pattern of the gas in the direction perpendicular to the radio axis, and provide evidence for steep velocity gradients within a radius of 0.1 arcsec of the core. The circular velocities measured from both the Keck and HST data lead to an estimate of the mass of the supermassive black hole of 2.5+/-0.7x10^9 solar masses. For the host galaxy properties of Cygnus A, this mass is consistent with the global correlations between black hole mass and host galaxy properties deduced for non-active galaxies. Therefore, despite the extreme power of its radio source and the quasar-like luminosity of its AGN, the black hole in Cygnus A is not unusually massive considering theluminosity of its host galaxy. Indeed, the estimated mass of the black hole in Cygnus A is similar to that inferred for the supermassive black hole in the FRI radio galaxy M87, despite the fact that the AGN and radio jets of Cygnus A are 2 -- 3 orders of magnitude more powerful.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Enzyme‐Activatable Chemokine Conjugates for In Vivo Targeting of Tumor‐Associated Macrophages

Increased levels of tumor‐associated macrophages (TAMs) are indicators of poor prognosis in most cancers. Although antibodies and small molecules blocking the recruitment of macrophages to tumors are under evaluation as anticancer therapies, these strategies are not specific for macrophage subpopulations. Herein we report the first enzyme‐activatable chemokine conjugates for effective targeting of defined macrophage subsets in live tumors. Our constructs exploit the high expression of chemokine receptors (e.g., CCR2) and the activity of cysteine cathepsins in TAMs to target these cells selectively over other macrophages and immune cells (e.g., neutrophils, T cells, B cells). Furthermore, we demonstrate that cathepsin‐activatable chemokines are compatible with both fluorescent and therapeutic cargos, opening new avenues in the design of targeted theranostic probes for immune cells in the tumor microenvironment

Target and (Astro-)WISE technologies - Data federations and its applications

After its first implementation in 2003 the Astro-WISE technology has been rolled out in several European countries and is used for the production of the KiDS survey data. In the multi-disciplinary Target initiative this technology, nicknamed WISE technology, has been further applied to a large number of projects. Here, we highlight the data handling of other astronomical applications, such as VLT-MUSE and LOFAR, together with some non-astronomical applications such as the medical projects Lifelines and GLIMPS, the MONK handwritten text recognition system, and business applications, by amongst others, the Target Holding. We describe some of the most important lessons learned and describe the application of the data-centric WISE type of approach to the Science Ground Segment of the Euclid satellite.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Proceedngs IAU Symposium No 325 Astroinformatics 201

Astro-WISE: Chaining to the Universe

The recent explosion of recorded digital data and its processed derivatives threatens to overwhelm researchers when analysing their experimental data or when looking up data items in archives and file systems. While current hardware developments allow to acquire, process and store 100s of terabytes of data at the cost of a modern sports car, the software systems to handle these data are lagging behind. This general problem is recognized and addressed by various scientific communities, e.g., DATAGRID/EGEE federates compute and storage power over the high-energy physical community, while the astronomical community is building an Internet geared Virtual Observatory, connecting archival data. These large projects either focus on a specific distribution aspect or aim to connect many sub-communities and have a relatively long trajectory for setting standards and a common layer. Here, we report "first light" of a very different solution to the problem initiated by a smaller astronomical IT community. It provides the abstract "scientific information layer" which integrates distributed scientific analysis with distributed processing and federated archiving and publishing. By designing new abstractions and mixing in old ones, a Science Information System with fully scalable cornerstones has been achieved, transforming data systems into knowledge systems. This break-through is facilitated by the full end-to-end linking of all dependent data items, which allows full backward chaining from the observer/researcher to the experiment. Key is the notion that information is intrinsic in nature and thus is the data acquired by a scientific experiment. The new abstraction is that software systems guide the user to that intrinsic information by forcing full backward and forward chaining in the data modelling.Comment: To be published in ADASS XVI ASP Conference Series, 2006, R. Shaw, F. Hill and D. Bell, ed

The counterrotating core and the black hole mass of IC1459

The E3 giant elliptical galaxy IC1459 is the prototypical galaxy with a fast counterrotating stellar core. We obtained one HST/STIS long-slit spectrum along the major axis of this galaxy and CTIO spectra along five position angles. We present self-consistent three-integral axisymmetric models of the stellar kinematics, obtained with Schwarzschild's numerical orbit superposition method. We study the dynamics of the kinematically decoupled core (KDC) in IC1459 and we find it consists of stars that are well-separated from the rest of the galaxy in phase space. The stars in the KDC counterrotate in a disk on orbits that are close to circular. We estimate that the KDC mass is ~0.5% of the total galaxy mass or ~3*10^9 Msun. We estimate the central black hole mass M_BH of IC1459 independently from both its stellar and its gaseous kinematics. Some complications probably explain why we find rather discrepant BH masses with the different methods. The stellar kinematics suggest that M_BH = (2.6 +/- 1.1)*10^9 Msun (3 sigma error). The gas kinematics suggests that M_BH ~ 3.5*10^8 Msun if the gas is assumed to rotate at the circular velocity in a thin disk. If the observed velocity dispersion of the gas is assumed to be gravitational, then M_BH could be as high as ~1.0*10^9 Msun. These different estimates bracket the value M_BH = (1.1 +/- 0.3)*10^9 Msun predicted by the M_BH-sigma relation. It will be an important goal for future studies to assess the reliability of black hole mass determinations with either technique. This is essential if one wants to interpret the correlation between the BH mass and other global galaxy parameters (e.g. velocity dispersion) and in particular the scatter in these correlations (believed to be only ~0.3 dex). [Abridged]Comment: 51 pages, LaTeX with 19 PostScript figures. Revised version, with three new figures and data tables. To appear in The Astrophysical Journal, 578, 2002 October 2

Origin of the X-ray Emission in the Nuclei of FR Is

We investigate the X-ray origin in FRIs using the multi-waveband high resolution data of eight FR I sources, which have very low Eddington ratios. We fit their multi-waveband spectrum using a coupled accretion-jet model. We find that X-ray emission in the source with the highest L_X (~1.8*10^-4 L_Edd) is from the advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). Four sources with moderate L_X(~several*10^-6 L_Edd) are complicated. The X-ray emission of one FR I is from the jet, and the other three is from the sum of the jet and ADAF. The X-ray emission in the three least luminous sources (L_X<1.0*10^-6L_Edd) is dominated by the jet. These results roughly support the predictions of Yuan and Cui(2005) where they predict that when the X-ray luminosity of the system is below a critical value, the X-radiation will not be dominated by the emission from the ADAF any longer, but by the jet. We also find that the accretion rates in four sources must be higher than the Bondi rates, which implies that other fuel supply (e.g., stellar winds) inside the Bondi radius should be important.Comment: 6 pages. To published in Journal of Physics, in proceedings of "The Universe under the Microscope - Astrophysics at High Angular Resolution" (Bad Honnef, Germany, April 2008), eds. R. Schoedel, A. Eckart, S. Pfalzner, and E. Ro