2007MNRAS.379..909N

The near-infrared (IR) integral field spectrograph SINFONI at the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope opens a new window for the study of central supermassive black holes. With a near-IR spatial resolution similar to Hubble Space Telescope optical and the ability to penetrate dust, it provides the possibility to explore the low-mass end of the relation where so far very few black hole masses were measured with stellar dynamics. With SINFONI, we observed the central region of the low-luminosity elliptical galaxy NGC4486a at a spatial resolution of ~0.1arcsec in the K band. The stellar kinematics were measured with a maximum penalized likelihood method considering the region around the CO absorption band heads. We determined a black hole mass of M_ø= (1.25^+0.75_–0.79)x10⁷M_☉(90 per cent confidence limit) using the Schwarzschild orbit superposition method including the full two-dimensional spatial information. This mass agrees with the predictions of the relation, strengthening its validity at the lower σ end.