The JWST Galactic Center Survey -- A White Paper
Abstract
The inner hundred parsecs of the Milky Way hosts the nearest supermassive black hole, largest reservoir of dense gas, greatest stellar density, hundreds of massive main and post main sequence stars, and the highest volume density of supernovae in the Galaxy. As the nearest environment in which it is possible to simultaneously observe many of the extreme processes shaping the Universe, it is one of the most well-studied regions in astrophysics. Due to its proximity, we can study the center of our Galaxy on scales down to a few hundred AU, a hundred times better than in similar Local Group galaxies and thousands of times better than in the nearest active galaxies. The Galactic Center (GC) is therefore of outstanding astrophysical interest. However, in spite of intense observational work over the past decades, there are still fundamental things unknown about the GC. JWST has the unique capability to provide us with the necessary, game-changing data. In this White Paper, we advocate for a JWST NIRCam survey that aims at solving central questions, that we have identified as a community: i) the 3D structure and kinematics of gas and stars; ii) ancient star formation and its relation with the overall history of the Milky Way, as well as recent star formation and its implications for the overall energetics of our galaxy's nucleus; and iii) the (non-)universality of star formation and the stellar initial mass function. We advocate for a large-area, multi-epoch, multi-wavelength NIRCam survey of the inner 100\,pc of the Galaxy in the form of a Treasury GO JWST Large Program that is open to the community. We describe how this survey will derive the physical and kinematic properties of ~10,000,000 stars, how this will solve the key unknowns and provide a valuable resource for the community with long-lasting legacy value.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.11912,
title = {The JWST Galactic Center Survey -- A White Paper},
author = {Rainer Schoedel and Steve Longmore and Jonny Henshaw and Adam Ginsburg and John Bally and Anja Feldmeier and Matt Hosek and Francisco Nogueras Lara and Anna Ciurlo and Mélanie Chevance and J. M. Diederik Kruijssen and Ralf Klessen and Gabriele Ponti and Pau Amaro-Seoane and Konstantina Anastasopoulou and Jay Anderson and Maria Arias and Ashley T. Barnes and Cara Battersby and Giuseppe Bono and Lucía Bravo Ferres and Aaron Bryant and Miguel Cano Gonzáalez and Santi Cassisi and Leonardo Chaves-Velasquez and Francesco Conte and Rodrigo Contreras Ramos and Angela Cotera and Samuel Crowe and Enrico di Teodoro and Tuan Do and Frank Eisenhauer and Rei Enokiya and Rubén Fedriani and Jennifer K. S. Friske and Dimitri Gadotti and Carme Gallart and Teresa Gallego Calvente and Eulalia Gallego Cano and Pablo García Fuentes and Macarena García Marín and Angela Gardini and Abhimat K. Gautam and Andrea Ghez and Stefan Gillessen and Naoteru Gouda and Alessia Gualandris and Mario Giuseppe Guarcello and Robert Gutermuth and Daryl Haggard and Matthew Hankins and Yue Hu and Rebecca Houghton and Ryohei Kano and Jens Kauffmann and Ryan Lau and Alexandre Lazarian and Rebecca Levy and Mattia Libralato and Anan Lu and Xing Lu and Jessica R. Lu and Nora Luetzgendorf and John Magorrian and Shifra Mandel and Sera Markoff and Álvaro Martínez Arranz and Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti and Maria Melamed and Elisabeth Mills and Kaya Mori and Mark Morris and Elena Murchikova and Tetsuya Nagata and Francisco Najarro and Govind Nandakumar and David Nataf and Nadine Neumayer and Shogo Nishiyama and Masayoshi Nobukawa and Dylan M Paré and Florian Peissker and Maya Petkova and Thushara G. S. Pillai and Mike Rich Carlos Román and Michael Rugel and Nils Ryde and Nadeen Sabha and Joel Sánchez Bermúdez and Álvaro Sánchez-Monge and Mathias Schultheis and Lijing Shao and Hiroko Shinnaga and Janet Simpson and Mattia C. Sormani and Shunya Takekawa and Jonathan C. Tan and Sabine Thater and Brian Thorsbro and Pablo Torne and Robin Goppala Tress and Hideki Uchiyam and Elena Valenti and Roeland van der Marel and Sill Verberne and Pierre Vermot and Sebastiano von Fellenberg and Daniel Walker and Gunther Witzel and Siyao Xu and Taihei Yano and Farhad Yusef-Zadeh and Michal Zajaček and Manuela Zoccali},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.11912},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This White Paper will be updated when required (e.g. new authors joining, editing of content). Most recent update: 14 Oct 2025