* Astronomy

Title: The Binary Nucleus in VCC 128: A Candidate Supermassive Black Hole in a Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy
Authors: Victor P. Debattista (University of Washington, Brooks Fellow), Ignacio Ferreras (King's College London), Anna Pasquali (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie), Anil Seth (University of Washington) Sven De Rijcke (Universiteit Gent), Lorenzo Morelli (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)

Hubble Space Telescope (hst) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images of the Virgo Cluster dwarf elliptical galaxy VCC 128 reveal an apparently double nucleus. The two components, which are separated by ~32 pc in projection, have the same magnitude and colour. We present a spectrum of this double nucleus and show that it is inconsistent with one or both components being emission-line background objects or foreground stars. The most likely interpretation is that, as suggested by Lauer et al. (1996) for the double nucleus in NGC 4486B, we are seeing a nuclear disk surrounding a supermassive black hole. This is only the second time an early-type dwarf (dE/dSph) galaxy has been suggested to host a SMBH.

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