The Galactic Center: An Interacting System of Unusual Sources

Abstract

The region bounded by the inner tens of light years at the center of the Milky Way contains five principal components that coexist within the central deep gravitational potential well. These constituents are a black hole candidate (Sgr~A*) with a mass equivalent to $2.6\pm 0.2\times 10^6$ suns, a surrounding cluster of evolved stars, a complex of young stars, molecular and ionized gas clouds, and a powerful supernova-like remnant. The interaction of these components is responsible for many of the phenomena occurring in this complex and unique portion of the Galaxy. Developing a consistent picture of the primary interactions between the components at the Galactic Center will improve our understanding of the nature of galactic nuclei in general, and will provide with a better defined set of characteristics of black holes. For example, the accretion of stellar winds by Sgr A* appears to produce far less radiation than indicated by estimates based on models of galactic nuclei.

26 pages (text only); see the published article with ten figures under Science Online Article http://www.physics.nwu.edu/research/zadeh.html

References in corpus (3)

• The Proper Motion of SgrA*: I. First VLBA Results
• Proper Motion of the Compact, Nonthermal Radio Source in the Galactic Center, Sagittarius a*
• Enhanced OH in C-type shock waves in molecular clouds

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Galactic Winds
• Chandra X-ray Spectroscopic Imaging of Sgr A* and the Central Parsec of the Galaxy
• On The Origin Of The Gamma Rays From The Galactic Center
• The Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center
• Very high energy gamma rays from the direction of Sagittarius A*
• Stellar Processes Near the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• The Large-scale Bipolar Wind in the Galactic Center
• A Chandra Study of Sgr A East: A Supernova Remnant Regulating The Activity Of Our Galactic Center?
• Supernova remnants and gamma-ray sources
• X-ray hiccups from SgrA* observed by XMM-Newton. The second brightest flare and three moderate flares caught in half a day
• A RIAF Interpretation for the Past Higher Activity of the Galactic Center Black Hole and the 511 keV Annihilation Emission
• Positron transport in the interstellar medium
• A Persistent High-Energy Flux from the Heart of the Milky Way : Integral's view of the Galactic Center
• Either neutralino dark matter or cuspy dark halos
• High Spectral and Spatial Resolution Observations of Shocked Molecular Hydrogen at the Galactic Center
• Interstellar gas within $\sim 10$ pc of Sgr A${}^{\ast }$
• Does the Milky Way Produce a Nuclear Galactic Wind?
• XMM-Newton observations of Sagittarius A East
• Milky Way Supermassive Black Hole: Dynamical Feeding from the Circumnuclear Environment
• On the spatial distribution and the origin of hypervelocity stars
• Have Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescopes Observed Dark Matter?
• Expected intermediate mass black holes in the Virgo cluster. II. Late-type galaxies
• Dense Ionized and Neutral Gas Surrounding Sgr A*
• Chemical abundances in Sgr A East: evidence for a Type Iax supernova remnant
• A Complete Catalogue of Dusty Supernova Remnants
• Three-Dimensional Observations of H_2 Emission around Sgr A East - I. Structure in the Central 10 Parsecs of Our Galaxy
• Diffuse TeV Emission at the Galactic Centre
• A Clustering Analysis of the Morphology of the 130 GeV Gamma-Ray Feature
• Star Formation at the Galactic Center
• Hot Molecular Gas in the Central 10 Parsecs of the Galaxy
• SgrA* emission at 7mm: variability and periodicity
• Sgr A East and its surroundings observed in X-rays
• Polarimetric Imaging of Sgr A* in its Flaring State