Re-examination of the CO absorption line in the M87 nucleus

TL;DR

This study reanalyzed ALMA data of M87's nucleus, revealing that previously identified CO absorption features are likely due to telluric contamination, thus only upper limits on molecular gas are established.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the earlier CO absorption detection was an artifact, clarifying the true molecular gas content in M87's nucleus.

Findings

The absorption line variability is due to calibration issues, not intrinsic to M87.

Telluric contamination explains the previously observed CO absorption features.

Only upper limits on molecular gas in M87's nucleus are established.

Abstract

We analyzed the archival ALMA data of the nuclear region of M87 and evaluate the molecular gas content from the CO(2--1) absorption line. We found an enigmatic variability in the absorption line depth between two epochs separated by only two months. We reexamined the dataset used in the analysis and found that the bandpass calibration source within the same dataset also revealed a similar absorption line structure. Furthermore, we observed a rise in the system noise temperature spectrum. We concluded that the absorption line structure identified in a previous study, and attributed to CO(2--1), does not originate from M87 but instead results from telluric contamination, and that we still have only the upper limit on the molecular gas around the nucleus of M87.