The Galactic Center

Abstract

In the past decade high resolution measurements in the infrared employing adaptive optics imaging on 10m telescopes have allowed determining the three dimensional orbits stars within ten light hours of the compact radio source at the center of the Milky Way. These observations show the presence of a three million solar mass black hole in Sagittarius A* beyond any reasonable doubt. The Galactic Center thus constitutes the best astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes which have long been postulated, and is also an ideal `lab' for studying the physics in the vicinity of such an object. Remarkably, young massive stars are present there and probably have formed in the innermost stellar cusp. Variable infrared and X-ray emission from Sagittarius A* are a new probe of the physical processes and space-time curvature just outside the event horizon.

Write up of the talk at IAU Symposium No. 238 (21-25 August 2006, Prague), to appear in Proceedings of "Black Holes: from Stars to Galaxies" (Cambridge University Press), p. 173

References in corpus (15)

• The Proper Motion of Sgr A*: II. The Mass of Sgr A*
• The Two Young Star Disks in the Central Parsec of the Galaxy: Properties, Dynamics and Formation
• SINFONI in the Galactic Center: young stars and IR flares in the central light month
• Stellar Processes Near the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• A size of ~1 AU for the radio source Sgr A* at the centre of the Milky Way
• Imaging Optically-Thin Hot Spots Near the Black Hole Horizon of Sgr A* at Radio and Near-Infrared Wavelengths
• Interferometric Measurements of Variable 340 GHz Linear Polarization in Sagittarius A*
• A Multi-Wavelength Study of Sgr A*: The Role of Near-IR Flares in Production of X-ray, Soft $\gamma$-ray and Sub-millimeter Emission
• The First Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics Observations of the Galactic Center: Sgr A*'s Infrared Color and the Extended Red Emission in its Vicinity
• Probing Post-Newtonian Gravity near the Galactic Black Hole with Stellar Doppler Measurements
• Variations in the spectral slope of Sgr A* during a NIR flare
• Stochastic Electron Acceleration During the NIR and X-ray Flares in Sagittarius A*
• Diffraction Limited Imaging Spectroscopy of the SgrA* Region using OSIRIS, a new Keck Instrument
• GRAVITY: The adaptive optics assisted, two object beam combiner for the VLTI
• On the role of strong gravity in polarization from scattering of light in relativistic flows

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The Demography of Super-Massive Black Holes: Growing Monsters at the Heart of Galaxies