The Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2016: Velocity-resolved H beta Lags in Luminous Seyfert Galaxies

We carried out spectroscopic monitoring of 21 low-redshift Seyfert 1 galaxies using the Kast double spectrograph on the 3 m Shane telescope at Lick Observatory from 2016 April to 2017 May. Targeting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with luminosities of lambda L ( lambda )(5100 angstrom) approximate to 10(44) erg s(-1) and predicted H beta lags of similar to 20-30 days or black hole masses of 10(7)-10(8.5) M (circle dot), our campaign probes luminosity-dependent trends in broad-line region (BLR) structure and dynamics as well as to improve calibrations for single-epoch estimates of quasar black hole masses. Here we present the first results from the campaign, including H beta emission-line light curves, integrated H beta lag times (8-30 days) measured against V-band continuum light curves, velocity-resolved reverberation lags, line widths of the broad H beta components, and virial black hole mass estimates (10(7.1)-10(8.1) M (circle dot)). Our results add significantly to the number of existing velocity-resolved lag measurements and reveal a diversity of BLR gas kinematics at moderately high AGN luminosities. AGN continuum luminosity appears not to be correlated with the type of kinematics that its BLR gas may exhibit. Follow-up direct modeling of this data set will elucidate the detailed kinematics and provide robust dynamical black hole masses for several objects in this sample.