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The supermassive black hole of M87 is one of the most massive black holesknown and has been the subject of several stellar and gas-dynamical massmeasurements; however the most recent revision to the stellar-dynamical blackhole mass measurement is a factor of about two larger than the previousgas-dynamical determinations. Here, we apply comprehensive gas-dynamical modelsthat include the propagation of emission-line profiles through the telescopeand spectrograph optics to new Space Telescope Imaging Spectrographobservations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Unlike the previous gas-dynamicalstudies of M87, we map out the complete kinematic structure of theemission-line disk within about 40 pc from the nucleus, and find that a smallamount of velocity dispersion internal to the gas disk is required to match theobserved line widths. We examine a scenario in which the intrinsic velocitydispersion provides dynamical support to the disk, and determine that theinferred black hole mass increases by only 6%. Incorporating this effect intothe error budget, we ultimately measure a mass of M_BH = (3.5^{+0.9}_{-0.7}) x10^9 M_sun (68% confidence). Our gas-dynamical black hole mass continues todiffer from the most recent stellar-dynamical mass by a factor of two,underscoring the need for carrying out more cross-checks between the two mainblack hole mass measurement methods.

The M87 Black Hole Mass from Gas-dynamical Models of Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Observations