The DOI matches its Crossref record.
The M•‐σ Relation for Supermassive Black Holes
Open accessAbstract
We investigate the differences in the M • -σ relation derived recently by Ferrarese & Merritt and by Gebhardt and collaborators. The shallower slope found by the latter authors (3.75 vs. 4.8) is due partly to the use of a regression algorithm that ignores measurement errors and partly to the value of the velocity dispersion adopted for a single galaxy, the Milky Way. A steeper relation is shown to provide a better fit to black hole masses derived from reverberation mapping studies. Combining the stellar dynamical, gasdynamical, and reverberation mapping mass estimates, we derive a best-fit relation M • = 1.30(±0.36) × 10 8 M ☉ (σ c /200 km s -1 ) 4.72(±0.36) .
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
The Slope of the Black Hole Mass versus Velocity Dispersion Correlation
Tremaine, S., Gebhardt, K., Bender, R., Bower, G., Dressler, A., Faber, S. M., Filippenko, A. V., Green, R., Grillmair, C., Ho, L. C., et al. (2002) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/341002 · Cited by 2,617
THE M-σ AND M-L RELATIONS IN GALACTIC BULGES, AND DETERMINATIONS OF THEIR INTRINSIC SCATTER
Gültekin, K., Richstone, D. O., Gebhardt, K., Lauer, T. R., Tremaine, S., Aller, M. C., Bender, R., Dressler, A., Faber, S. M., Filippenko, A. V., et al. (2009) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/698/1/198 · Cited by 1,533
Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research
Ferrarese, L., & Ford, H. (2005) · Space Science Reviews · doi:10.1007/s11214-005-3947-6 · Cited by 850
Self-citationStellar Orbits around the Galactic Center Black Hole
Ghez, A. M., Salim, S., Hornstein, S. D., Tanner, A., Lu, J. R., Morris, M., Becklin, E. E., & Duchene, G. (2005) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/427175 · Cited by 802
Falcke, H., Körding, E., & Markoff, S. (2004) · Astronomy & Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20031683 · Cited by 768
Metadata
- Authors
- Merritt, D., & Ferrarese, L.
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 2001-01-20
- Volume
- 547
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 140-145
- ISSN
- 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4357
- OpenAlex
- W2083539495
- Cited by
- 491
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 30.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The M•‐σ Relation for Supermassive Black Holes. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/318372
- The paper
- Merritt, D., & Ferrarese, L. (2001). The M•‐σ Relation for Supermassive Black Holes. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/318372
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.