Traversing the Galactic Centre in space and time
arXiv:2606.24706 · doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02958-8
Abstract
The Galactic Center is often identified with its central supermassive black hole, Sgr A*. Yet the black hole governs gravitationally only the innermost few parsecs of the Milky Way, while the surrounding Nuclear Star Cluster, Nuclear Stellar Disc and Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) shape the dynamics of stars and gas on progressively larger scales. Understanding how these components interact is essential not only for reconstructing the history of our own Galaxy, but also for interpreting galactic nuclei more generally.
5 pages, 1 figure, concise meeting report of the Galactic Center workshop 2026 (IAU Symposium 405, https://gc2026.muni.cz/); accepted version, published in Nature Astronomy