GRAVITY Science DOI: 10.18727/0722-6691/5166 Spatially Resolving the Quasar Broad Emission Line Region GRAVITY Collaboration Juan Pablo Gil 8 Anne-Lise Maire 23, 3 Stefan Gillessen1 Leander Mehrgan 8 Roberto Abuter 8 Frédéric Gonté 8 Antoine Mérand 8 Matteo Accardo 8 Paulo Gordo 6 Florentin Millour 37 Tobias Adler 3 Damien Gratadour 2 Paul Mollière 3 António Amorim 6 Alexandra Greenbaum 40 Thibaut Moulin 5 Narsireddy Anugu7,29,30 Rebekka Grellmann 4 André Müller 3 Gerardo Ávila 8 Ulrich Grözinger 3 Eric Müller 8, 3 Michi Bauböck1 Patricia Guajardo 8 Friedrich Müller 3 Myriam Benisty 5,12 Sylvain Guieu 5 Hagai Netzer 32 Jean-Philippe Berger 5 Maryam Habibi1 Udo Neumann 3 Joachim M. Bestenlehner 22, 3 Pierre Haguenauer 8 Mathias Nowak 2 Hervé Beust 5 Oliver Hans1 Sylvain Oberti 8 Nicolas Blind9 Xavier Haubois 8 Thomas Ott 1 Mickaël Bonnefoy 5 Marcus Haug 8 Laurent Pallanca 8 Henri Bonnet 8 Frank Haußmann1 Johana Panduro 3 Pierre Bourget 8 Thomas Henning 3 Luca Pasquini 8 Jérôme Bouvier 5 Stefan Hippler 3 Thibaut Paumard 2 Wolfgang Brandner 3 Sebastian F. Hönig 27 Isabelle Percheron 8 Roland Brast 8 Matthew Horrobin 4 Karine Perraut 5 Alexander Buron1 Armin Huber 3 Guy Perrin 2 Leonard Burtscher 14 Zoltan Hubert 5 Bradley M. Peterson 24,25, 26 Faustine Cantalloube 3 Norbert Hubin 8 Pierre-Olivier Petrucci 5 Alessio Caratti o Garatti 16, 3 Christian A. Hummel 8 Andreas Pflüger 1 Paola Caselli 1 Gerd Jakob 8 Oliver Pfuhl 8 Frédéric Cassaing 10 Annemieke Janssen 36 Than Phan Duc 8 Frédéric Chapron 2 Alejandra Jimenez Rosales1 Jaime E. Pineda1 Benjamin Charnay 2 Lieselotte Jochum 8 Philipp M. Plewa1 Élodie Choquet 37 Laurent Jocou 5 Dan Popovic 8 Yann Clénet 2 Jens Kammerer 8, 41 Jörg-Uwe Pott 3 Claude Collin 2 Martina Karl 20, 21 Almudena Prieto 39 Vincent Coudé du Foresto 2 Andreas Kaufer 8 Laurent Pueyo 11 Ric Davies1 Stefan Kellner1 Sebastian Rabien1 Casey Deen1 Sarah Kendrew 11, 3 Andrés Ramírez 8 Françoise Delplancke-Ströbele 8 Lothar Kern8 José Ricardo Ramos 3 Roderick Dembet 8 Pierre Kervella 2 Christian Rau1 Frédéric Derie 8 Mario Kiekebusch 8 Tom Ray 16 Willem-Jan de Wit 8 Makoto Kishimoto 31 Miguel Riquelme 8 Jason Dexter 1 Lucia Klarmann 3 Gustavo Rodríguez-Coira 2 Tim de Zeeuw 1,14 Ralf Klein 3 Ralf-Rainer Rohloff 3 Catherine Dougados 5 Rainer Köhler 3 Daniel Rouan 2 Guillaume Dubus 5 Yitping Kok1 Gérard Rousset 2 Gilles Duvert 5 Johann Kolb 8 Joel Sanchez-Bermudez 3, 17 Monica Ebert 3 Maria Koutoulaki 16,19,3,8 Marc Schartmann 1,33,34 Andreas Eckart 4,13 Martin Kulas 3 Silvia Scheithauer 3 Frank Eisenhauer 1 Lucas Labadie 4 Markus Schöller 8 Michael Esselborn 8 Sylvestre Lacour 2, 8 Nicolas Schuhler 8 Fabio Eupen 4 Anne-Marie Lagrange 5 Dominique Segura-Cox1 Pierre Fédou 2 Vincent Lapeyrère 2 Jinyi Shangguan1 Miguel C. Ferreira 6 Werner Laun 3 Thomas T. Shimizu1 Gert Finger 8 Bernard Lazareff 5 Jason Spyromilio 8 Natascha M. Förster Schreiber 1 Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin 5 Amiel Sternberg1, 32 Feng Gao1 Pierre Léna 2 Matthias Raphael Stock 21 César Enrique García Dabó 8 Rainer Lenzen 3 Odele Straub 1, 2 Rebeca Garcia Lopez 16, 3 Samuel Lévêque 8 Christian Straubmeier 4 Paulo J. V. Garcia 7 Chien-Cheng Lin 3,18 Eckhard Sturm1 Éric Gendron 2 Magdalena Lippa1 Marcos Suárez Valles 8 Reinhard Genzel 1,15 Dieter Lutz1 Linda J. Tacconi1 Ortwin Gerhard1 Yves Magnard 5 Wing-Fai Thi1 20 The Messenger 178 – Quarter 4 | 2019 Konrad R. W. Tristram 8 15 Department of Physics, Le Conte Hall, 40 University of Michigan Department of Javier J. Valenzuela 8 University of California, Berkeley, USA Astronomy, Ann Arbor, USA Roy van Boekel 3 16 Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 41 Research School of Astronomy & Ewine F. van Dishoeck14 Dublin, Ireland Astrophysics, Australian National Pierre Vermot 2 17 Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad University, Canberra, Australia Frédéric Vincent 2 Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Sebastiano von Fellenberg1 de México, Mexico Idel Waisberg1 18 Institute for Astronomy, University of The angular resolution of the Very Large Jason J. Wang 28 Hawai’i, Honolulu, USA Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and Imke Wank 4 19 School of Physics, University College the excellent sensitivity of GRAVITY Johannes Weber 1 Dublin, Ireland have led to the first detection of spa- Gerd Weigelt 13 20 Max Planck Institute for Physics, tially resolved kinematics of high veloc- Felix Widmann1 Munich, Germany ity atomic gas near an accreting super- Ekkehard Wieprecht1 21 TUM Department of Physics, Technical massive black hole, revealing rotation Michael Wiest 4 University of Munich, Garching, on sub-parsec scales in the quasar Erich Wiezorrek1 Germany 3C 273 at a distance of 550 Mpc. The Markus Wittkowski 8 22 Department of Physics and Astronomy, observations can be explained as the Julien Woillez 8 University of Sheffield, UK result of circular orbits in a thick disc Burkhard Wolff 8 23 STAR Institute, Liège, Belgium configuration around a 300 million solar Pengqian Yang 3, 35 24 Department of Astronomy, The Ohio mass black hole. Within an ongoing Senol Yazici 1, 4 State University, Columbus, USA Large Programme, this capability will be Denis Ziegler 2 25 Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle used to study the kinematics of atomic Gérard Zins 8 Physics, The Ohio State University, gas and its relation to hot dust in a Columbus, USA sample of quasars and Seyfert galaxies. 26 Space Telescope Science Institute, We will measure a new radius-luminosity 1 Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Baltimore, USA relation from spatially resolved data and Physics, Garching, Germany 27 School of Physics & Astronomy, test the current methods used to meas- 2 LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université University of Southampton, UK ure black hole mass in large surveys. PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, 28 Department of Astronomy, California Université de Paris, Meudon, France Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 3 Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, USA Introduction Heidelberg, Germany 29 Steward Observatory, Department 4 I Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu of Astronomy, University of Arizona, Emission lines of atomic gas velocity- Köln, Germany Tucson, USA broadened to widths of 3000– 5 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 30 University of Exeter, School of Physics 10 000 km s–1 are a hallmark of quasars Grenoble, France and Astronomy, Exeter, UK and are thought to trace the gravitational 6 CENTRA and Universidade de Lisboa 31 Kyoto Sangyo University, Department potential of the central supermassive − Faculdade de Ciências, Lisboa, of Astrophysics and Atmospheric black hole. Despite decades of study Portugal Sciences, Japan their physical origin remains unclear. The 7 CENTRA and Universidade do Porto – 32 School of Physics and Astronomy, observed properties can be explained Faculdade de Engenharia, Porto, Tel Aviv University, Israel by emission from discrete, collapsed Portugal 33 Excellence Cluster Origins, Ludwig- clouds or high-density regions of a con- 8 ESO Maximilians-Universität München, tinuous medium. The gas may be part 9 Observatoire de Genève, Université de Garching, Germany of the inflow feeding the black hole or a Genève, Versoix, Switzerland 34 Universitäts-Sternwarte München, continuous equatorial outflow. Assuming 10 DOTA, ONERA, Université Paris- Munich, Germany a gravitational origin, line widths com- Saclay, Châtillon, France 35 Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine bined with a measurement of the emis- 11 European Space Agency, Space Mechanics, Chinese Academy of sion region size provide an estimate of Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Sciences, China the black hole mass. USA 36 NOVA Optical Infrared Instrumentation 12 Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco- Group at ASTRON, Dwingeloo, the Extensive monitoring campaigns use Chilena de Astronomía (CNRS UMI Netherlands light echoes in a technique called rever- 3386), Departamento de Astronomía, 37 Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, CNES, LAM, beration mapping to measure the emis- Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, France sion size, with ongoing work expanding Santiago, Chile 38 Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur the sample size from tens (Kaspi et al., 13 Max Planck Institute for Radio Astron- Lagrange, Boulevard de l’Observatoire, 2000; Peterson et al., 2004) to hundreds omy, Bonn, Germany Nice, France (Du et al., 2016; Grier et al., 2017). The 14 Sterrewacht Leiden, Leiden University, 39 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, key result of these studies is that the Leiden, the Netherlands La Laguna, Spain size of the emitting region increases with The Messenger 178 – Quarter 4 | 2019 21 GRAVITY Science GRAVITY Collaboration, Spatially Resolving the Quasar Broad Emission Line Region a Radial velocity (km s–1) b 30 –4,000 –2,000 0 2,000 4,000 0.8 PAJet = 222° 2.178 1.6 20 Photocentre Pa flux α m) 0.6 2.176 (µ 1.4 ) ) 10 th (µas x e (° 0.4 1.2 2.174 leng on flu ti 0 phas 1.0 2.172 wave al 0.2 ti ed Declina en 0.8 –10 rv Δ er 2.170 0.0 Normalised ff Di 0.6 Obse Phase –20 –0.2 2.168 0.4 BLR model BLR model –0.4 0.2 –30 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 30 20 10 0 –10 –20 –30 Observed wavelength (µm) Δ Right ascension (µas) c Yv d 150 3 PAJet = 222° Y 100 2 ) / –1 s ) 50 1 km ev e¦ 3 (µas H 0 (1 ion ty "KNTC at 0 0 loci e¦ v ve , e Declin %+ –50 –1 MFTK@Q Δ BKNTC CDMRHSX Radial –100 –2 1@CH@K ` BKNTC CDMRHSX –150 –3 150 100 50 0 –50 –100 –150 1LHM 1!+1 Q Δ Right ascension (µas) Figure 1. GRAVITY spatially resolves the broad emis- This is the result of net ordered rotation of the engines.