The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping

astro-ph

/ Authors

Kelly D. Denney, Misty C. Bentz, Bradley M. Peterson, Richard W. Pogge, Edward M. Cackett, Matthias Dietrich, Jeffrey K. J. Fogel, Himel Ghosh, Keith Horne, Charles Kuehn

and 8 more authors

Takeo Minezaki, Christopher A. Onken, Vladimir I. Pronik, Douglas O. Richstone, Sergey G. Sergeev, Marianne Vestergaard, Matthew G. Walker, Yuzuru Yoshii

/ Abstract

We present new observations leading to an improved black hole mass estimate for the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 as part of a reverberation-mapping campaign conducted at the MDM Observatory. Cross-correlation analysis of the H_beta emission-line light curve with the optical continuum light curve reveals an emission-line time delay of 3.73 (+-0.75) days. By combining this time delay with the H_beta line width, we derive a central black hole mass of M_BH = 9.8(+-2.1)x10^6 M_sun, an improvement in precision of a factor of several over past results.