MSc defence by Matias Sebastian Ollikainen

Title: Estimating AGN black hole masses via velocity broadening of the CIV emission line situated at 1559Å

Supervisor: Marianne Vestergaard

Abstract: In this paper I seek to examine observational data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS), in order to estimate the mass of the central object of the host galaxies. It does this via a random-walk χ2 algorithm, which primarily serves to model the CIV emission line, whose FWHM is used to estimate the central mass. By the end, I have calculated masses, luminosities, accretion rates and examined correlations between these parameters.