Related papers: Monitoring stellar orbits around the Massive Black…
In this Letter, we demonstrate that short-period stars orbiting around the supermassive black hole in our Galactic Center can successfully be used to probe the gravitational theory in a strong regime. We use 19 years of observations of the…
We measure the Milky Way's rotation curve over the Galactocentric range 4 kpc <~ R <~ 14 kpc from the first year of data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). We model the line-of-sight velocities of…
We report the results of a diffraction-limited, photometric variability study of the central 5"x5" of the Galaxy conducted over the past 10 years using speckle imaging techniques on the W. M. Keck I 10 m telescope. Within our limiting…
The black hole in the center of the Milky Way, Sgr A*, has the largest mass-to-distance ratio among all known black holes in the Universe. This property makes Sgr A* the optimal target for testing the gravitational no-hair theorem. In the…
We analyze data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys of the globular cluster Omega Cen. We construct a photometric and proper-motion catalog using the GO-9442, GO-10252, and GO-10775 data sets. The 2.5- to 4-year…
Although they are the main constituents of the Galactic disk population, for half of the open clusters in the Milky Way reported in the literature nothing is known except the raw position and an approximate size. The main goal of this study…
The effect of stars on the lensing properties of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center is similar to the effect of planets on microlensing by a star. We show that the dense stellar cluster around SgrA* increases by factors of a…
The central 0.1 parsecs of the Milky Way host a supermassive black hole identified with the position of the radio and infrared source Sagittarius A*, a cluster of young, massive stars (the S stars) and various gaseous features. Recently,…
We present a sample of 254,882 luminous red giant branch (LRGB) stars selected from the APOGEE and LAMOST surveys. By combining photometric and astrometric information from the 2MASS and Gaia surveys, the precise distances of the sample…
Infrared observations of stellar orbits about Sgr A* probe the mass distribution in the inner parsec of the Galaxy and provide definitive evidence for the existence of a massive black hole. However, the infrared astrometry is relative and…
This article summarizes the structural parameters of the Galactic bulge and disk, and discusses the interpretation of the bulge microlensing observations and the determination of the Milky Way's luminous mass from the terminal velocity…
In this paper we simultaneously fit the orbits and line-of-sight velocities of the ionized gas around the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A$^{\ast}$ (Sgr A$^{\ast}$), at the center of the Milky Way. The data we use are taken with the…
The S-Stars in the Galactic-center region are found to be on near-perfect Keplerian orbits around presumably a supermassive black hole, with periods of 15-50 yr. Since these stars reach a few percent of light speed at pericenter, various…
We study the dynamics and evolution of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster performing a high resolution direct one-million-body simulation. Focusing on the interactions between such stellar system and the central supermassive black hole, we…
We present 3D velocity measurements and acceleration limits for stars within a few parsec of the Galactic Center (GC) black hole, Sgr A*, based on observations of 43 and 86 GHz circumstellar maser emission. Observations were taken with the…
Two groups of astronomers used the large telescopes Keck and VLT for decades to observe trajectories of bright stars near the Galactic Centre. Based on results of their observations the astronomers concluded that trajectories of the stars…
Stellar-mass black holes have been detected by radial-velocity observations in star/black hole binaries. These allow only the determination of the mass function. Tracking the astrometric orbits of the visible components of the star/black…
The Galactic center offers us a unique opportunity to test General Relativity (GR) with the orbits of stars around a supermassive black hole. Observations of these stars have been one of the great successes of adaptive optics on 8-10 m…
Several stars orbit around a black hole candidate of mass $3.7\times 10^6$ M$_{\odot}$, in the region of the Galactic Center (GC). Looking for General Relativistic (GR) periastron shifts is limited by the existence of a stellar cluster…
We report discovery of a bright, nearby ($G = 13.8;\,\,d = 480\,\rm pc$) Sun-like star orbiting a dark object. We identified the system as a black hole candidate via its astrometric orbital solution from the Gaia mission. Radial velocities…