Related papers: The Galactic Center Weather Forecast
Sgr A* at the Galactic Center is a puzzling source. It has a mass M=(2.5+/-0.4) x 10^6 solar masses which makes it an excellent black hole candidate. Observations of stellar winds and other gas flows in its vicinity suggest a mass accretion…
Measurements of stellar orbits provide compelling evidence that the compact radio source Sagittarius A* at the Galactic Centre is a black hole four million times the mass of the Sun. With the exception of modest X-ray and infrared flares,…
Gas clouds are present in the Galactic centre, where they orbit around the supermassive black hole. Collisions between these clumps reduce their angular momentum, and as a result some of the clumps are set on a plunging trajectory.…
By solving radiative transfer equations, we examine three-dimensional radiative properties of a magnetohydrodynamic accretion flow model confronting with the observed spectrum of Sgr A*, in the vicinity of supermassive black hole at the…
Images from the vicinity of the black hole horizon at the Galactic centre (Sgr A*) could be obtained in the near future with a Very Large Baseline Array of sub-millimetre telescopes. The recently observed short-term infrared and X-ray…
Sub milli-arcsecond astrometry and imaging of the black hole Sgr A* at the Galactic centre may become possible in the near future at infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths. Motivated by observations of short-term infrared and X-ray…
The radio source Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is believed to be a hot, inhomogeneous, magnetized plasma flowing near the event horizon of the 3 million solar mass black hole at the galactic center. At a distance of 8000 parsecs the black hole…
Recent high resolution observations of the Galactic center black hole allow for direct comparison with accretion disk simulations. We compare two-temperature synchrotron emission models from three dimensional, general relativistic…
Recent measurements of stellar orbits provide compelling evidence that the compact radio source Sagittarius A* at the Galactic Centre is a 3.6-million-solar-mass black hole. Sgr A* is remarkably faint in all wavebands other than the radio…
The interplay between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their environments is believed to command an essential role in galaxy evolution. The majority of these SMBHs are in the radiative inefficient accretion phase where this interplay…
Our central Galactic supermassive black hole, Sgr A*, exists mostly in a very stable, extremely low-luminosity (~10^{-9} L_Edd), thermal quiescent state, which is interrupted roughly daily by a brief, nonthermal X-ray flare. Because they…
Context. The properties of the accretion flow surrounding the supermassive central black hole of the Galaxy, Sgr A*, will be scrutinized by the new-generation instrument GRAVITY and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Developing fast,…
I review radiatively inefficient accretion flow models for the 2.6 million solar mass black hole (BH) in the Galactic Center. I argue for a 'concordance model' of Sgr A*: both theory and observations suggest that hot ambient gas around the…
The center of our Galaxy hosts the best constrained supermassive black hole in the universe, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Its mass and distance have been accurately determined from stellar orbits and proper motion studies, respectively, and its…
The radio source Sgr A* in the Galactic center emits a polarized spectrum at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths that is strongly suggestive of relativistic disk accretion onto a massive black hole. We use the well-constrained mass of…
The enigmatic radio source Sagittarius A* at the centre of our Galaxy appears to be a low-luminosity version of active galactic nuclei in other galaxies. By analogy with active galactic nuclei models, it has been proposed that Sgr A* may be…
The hypothesized supermassive black hole in the nucleus of M31 (which we shall hereafter call M31*) has many features in common with Sgr A* at the Galactic Center, yet they differ in several significant and important ways. Though M31* is…
An attempt is made to reconcile the large wind-loss rates of stars in the Galactic Centre (GC) with the predicted low accretion rate for Sgr A*, the putative blackhole at the heart of the Milky Way. It is found that, independent of the…
High-resolution, multi-wavelength, and time-domain observations of the Galactic centre black hole candidate, Sgr A*, allow for a direct test of contemporary accretion theory. To date, all models have assumed alignment between the accretion…
The recent detection of a three-hour X-ray flare from Sgr A* by Chandra provides very strong evidence for a compact emitting region near this supermassive black hole at the Galactic center. Sgr A*'s mm/sub-mm spectrum and polarimetric…