Figure 13.
Example distributions of
the first four kinemati-
cal moments (v, σ, h 3
and h 4 ) measured from
the GMOS-N IFS data
for two of the MASSIVE
survey galaxies. For
each galaxy, the top row
shows two-dimensional
maps, while the bottom
row shows two-sided
radial profiles from
GMOS (magenta circles)
and Mitchell (green
squares) data. The verti-
cal dotted lines mark
radii of ± 0.2 arcsecond.
Figure reproduced from
Ene et al., The Astro-
physical Journal, 878:
57, 2019.
The kinematic diversity across the full sample
is illustrated in Figure 14 (next page), which
shows the velocity dispersion profiles for all
20 galaxies. Although most of the galaxies
have centrally rising dispersions, the slopes
vary greatly, and in some cases change sign
with radius. A sharply rising central disper-
sion may indicate the presence of a SMBH
but can also reflect increasing radial anisot-
ropy in the stellar velocities. Information
January 2020 / 2019 Year in Review
from the higher order moments, particularly
the kurtosis h 4 , can determine the relative
importance of these two effects. For this
purpose, high spatial resolution for resolv-
ing stellar kinematics within the sphere of
influence of the SMBH is essential.
As a proof of concept, the new study per-
forms detailed dynamical modeling of the
combined GMOS and Mitchell IFS data sets
for NGC 1453, the most regular fast-rotating
GeminiFocus
39