English

Coordinated multi-wavelength observations of Sgr A*

Astrophysics 2014-11-18 v1

Abstract

We report on recent near-infrared (NIR) and X-ray observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the electromagnetic manifestation of the ~4x10^6 solar masses super-massive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic Center. The goal of these coordinated multi-wavelength observations is to investigate the variable emission from Sgr A* in order to obtain a better understanding of the underlying physical processes in the accretion flow/outflow. The observations have been carried out using the NACO adaptive optics (AO) instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (July 2005, May 2007) and the ACIS-I instrument aboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory (July 2005). We report on a polarized NIR flare synchronous to a 8x1033 erg/s X-ray flare in July 2005, and a further flare in May 2007 that shows the highest sub-flare to flare contrast observed until now. The observations can be interpreted in the framework of a model involving a temporary disk with a short jet. In the disk component flux density variations can be explained due to hot spots on relativistic orbits around the central SMBH. The variations of the sub-structures of the May 2007 flare are interpreted as a variation of the hot spot structure due to differential rotation within the disk.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.0168,
  title  = {Coordinated multi-wavelength observations of Sgr A*},
  author = {A. Eckart and R. Schoedel and F. K. Baganoff and M. Morris and T. Bertram and M. Dovciak and D. Downes and W. J. Duschl and V. Karas and S. Koenig and T. Krichbaum and M. Krips and D. Kunneriath and R-S. Lu and S. Markoff and J. Mauerhan and L. Meyer and J. Moultaka and K. Muzic and F. Najarro and K. Schuster and L. Sjouwerman and C. Straubmeier and C. Thum and S. Vogel and H. Wiesemeyer and G. Witzel and M. Zamaninasab and A. Zensus},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.0168},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

15 pages, 7 figures, contribution for the conference "The Universe under the Microscope" (AHAR 2008), to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series by Institute of Physics Publishing

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:26:11.731Z