In Spring 2011, the Lick AGN Monitoring Project observed a sample of 15 bright, nearby Seyfert 1 galaxies in the V band as part of a reverberation mapping campaign. The observations were taken at six ground-based telescopes, including the West Mountain Observatory 0.91 m telescope, the 0.76 m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, 0.6 m Super-LOTIS at Kitt Peak, the Palomar 60 inch telescope, and the 2 m Faulkes telescopes North and South. The V -band light curves measure the continuum variability of our sample of Seyferts on an almost daily cadence for 2–3 months. We use image-subtraction software to isolate the variability of the Seyfert nucleus from the constant V -band flux of the host galaxy for the most promising targets, and we adopt standard aperture photometry techniques for the targets with smaller levels of variability. These V -band light curves will be used, with measurements of the broad emission line flux, to measure supermassive black hole masses and to constrain the geometry and dynamics of the broad-line region through dynamical modeling techniques.

Reverberation mapping probes the structure of the broad emission-line region (BLR) in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The kinematics of the BLR gas can be used to measure the mass of the central supermassive black hole. The main uncertainty affecting black hole mass determinations is the structure of the BLR. We present a new method for reverberation mapping based on regularized linear inversion (RLI) that includes modelling of the AGN continuum light curves. This enables fast calculation of velocity-resolved response maps to constrain BLR structure. RLI allows for negative response, such as when some areas of the BLR respond in inverse proportion to a change in ionizing continuum luminosity. We present time delays, integrated response functions, and velocity-delay maps for the H beta broad emission line in five nearby AGN, as well as for H alpha and H gamma in Arp 151, using data from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008. We find indications of prompt response in three of the objects (Arp 151, NGC 5548, and SBS 1116+583A) with additional prompt response in the red wing of H beta. In SBS 1116+583A we find evidence for a multimodal broad prompt response followed by a second narrow response at 10 d. We find no clear indications of negative response. The results are complementary to, and consistent with, other methods such as cross-correlation, maximum entropy, and dynamical modelling. RLI with continuum light-curve modelling provides a fast, complementary method for velocity-resolved reverberation mapping and is suitable for use on large data sets.

As part of the Australian spectroscopic dark energy survey (OzDES) we are carrying out a large-scale reverberation mapping study of >= 500 quasars over five years in the 30 deg(2) area of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) supernova fields. These quasars have redshifts ranging up to 4 and have apparent AB magnitudes between 16.8 mag < r < 22.5 mag. The aim of the survey is to measure time lags between fluctuations in the quasar continuum and broad emission-line fluxes of individual objects in order to measure black hole masses for a broad range of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and constrain the radius-luminosity (R-L) relationship. Here we investigate the expected efficiency of the OzDES reverberation mapping campaign and its possible extensions. We expect to recover lags for similar to 35-45 per cent of the quasars. AGN with shorter lags and greater variability are more likely to yield a lag measurement, and objects with lags less than or similar to 6 months or similar to 1 yr are expected to be recovered the most accurately. The baseline OzDES reverberation mapping campaign is predicted to produce an unbiased measurement of the R-L relationship parameters for H beta, MgII lambda 2798, and C IV lambda 1549. Extending the baseline survey by either increasing the spectroscopic cadence, extending the survey season, or improving the emission-line flux measurement accuracy will significantly improve the R-L parameter constraints for all broad emission lines.

Observations and numerical simulations of galaxy clusters strongly indicate that the hot intracluster X-ray-emitting gas is not spherically symmetric. In many earlier studies, spherical symmetry has been assumed partly because of limited data quality; however, new deep observations and instrumental designs will make it possible to go beyond that assumption. Measuring the temperature and density profiles are of interest when observing the X-ray gas; however, the spatial shape of the gas itself also carries very useful information. For example, it is believed that the X-ray gas shape in the inner parts of galaxy clusters is greatly affected by feedback mechanisms, cooling, and rotation, and measuring this shape can therefore indirectly provide information on these mechanisms. In this paper, we present a novel method to measure the three-dimensional shape of the intracluster X-ray-emitting gas. We can measure the shape from X-ray observations only, i. e., the method does not require combination with independent measurements of, e. g., the clustermass or density profile. This is possiblewhen one uses the full spectral information contained in the observed spectra. We demonstrate the method by measuring radially dependent shapes along the line of sight for CHANDRA mock data. We find that at least 106 photons are required to get a 5s detection of shape for an X-ray gas having realistic features such as a cool core and a double power law for the density profile. We illustrate how Bayes' theorem is used to find the best-fitting model of the X-ray gas, an analysis that is very important in a real observational scenario where the true spatial shape is unknown. Not including a shape in the fit may propagate to a mass bias if the X-ray is used to estimate the total cluster mass. We discuss this mass bias for a class of spatial shapes.

Measurements of galaxy cluster kinematics are important in understanding the dynamical state and evolution of clusters of galaxies, as well as constraining cosmological models. While it is well established that clusters exhibit non-spherical geometries, evident in the distribution of galaxies on the sky, azimuthal variations of galaxy kinematics within clusters have yet to be observed. Here we measure the azimuthal dependence of the line-of-sight velocity dispersion profile in a stacked sample of 1743 galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The clusters are drawn from the SDSS DR8 redMaPPer catalog. We find that the line-of-sight velocity dispersion of galaxies lying along the major axis of the central galaxy is larger than those that lie along the minor axis. This is the first observational detection of anisotropic kinematics of galaxies in clusters. We show that the result is consistent with predictions from numerical simulations. Furthermore, we find that the degree of projected anisotropy is strongly dependent on the line-of-sight orientation of the galaxy cluster, opening new possibilities for assessing systematics in optical cluster finding.