The central kinematics of NGC 1399 measured with 14 pc resolution

We present near-infrared (NIR) adaptive optics-assisted spectroscopic observations of the CO (Delta mu= 2) absorption bands towards the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399. The observations were made with NAOS-CONICA (on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope) and have a full width at half-maximum resolution of 0.15 arcsec (14 pc). Kinematic analysis of the observations reveals a decoupled core and strongly non-Gaussian line-of-sight velocity profiles in the central 0.2 arcsec (19 pc). NIR imaging also indicates an asymmetric elongation of the central isophotes in the same region. We use spherical orbit-superposition models to interpret the kinematics, using a set of orthogonal 'eigen-velocity profiles' that allow us to fit models directly to spectra. The models require a central black hole of mass 1.2(-0.6)(+0.5) x 10(9) M circle dot, with a strongly tangentially biased orbit distribution in the inner 40 pc.