Related papers: An Improved Distance and Mass Estimate for Sgr A* …
For very fast spinning black holes with a>0.9953 the orbital velocity of a test particle unexpectly shows a positive radial gradient for low orbits, an effect of GR which has been overlooked so far. For a=0.99616 the maximum radial change…
The gas cloud G2 falling toward Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is supposed to provide valuable information on the physics of accretion flows and the environment of the black hole. We…
Context. In addition to the supermassive black hole Sgr A*, the inner parsec of our Galactic center is home to numerous fruitful scientific habitats. One of these environments is the S cluster, which consists of two distinct populations:…
The measurement of relativistic effects around the galactic center may allow in the near future to strongly constrain the parameters of the supermassive black hole likely present at the galactic center (Sgr A*). As a by-product of these…
In the era of massive photometric surveys, we explore several approaches to estimate the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGN) from optical ground-based imaging, in each case comparing to the independent…
We present our dynamical mass constraints on the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the early-type galaxy NGC 7052 using high spatial-resolution observations of $^{12}$CO(2-1) emission from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter…
In three previous papers I showed that the series of the midpoints of the times of all the X-ray flares of Sgr A* that have been detected so far harbor a statistical trend termed pacemaker regularity. This means that X-ray flares are…
We have obtained high spatial resolution Keck OSIRIS integral field spectroscopy of four z~1.5 ultra-luminous infrared galaxies that exhibit broad H-alpha emission lines indicative of strong AGN activity. The observations were made with the…
The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) exhibits temporal and spectral variability across the electromagnetic spectrum. However, variability at radio frequencies below ~ 5 GHz for timescales shorter than a day remains largely…
Future observations with next-generation large-area radio telescopes are expected to discover radio pulsars (PSRs) closely orbiting around Sagittarius~A* (Sgr~A*), the supermassive black hole (SMBH) dwelling at our Galactic Center (GC).…
To obtain accurate mass measurements for cold planets discovered by microlensing, it is usually necessary to combine light curve modeling with at least two lens mass-distance relations. Often, a constraint on the Einstein ring radius…
The compact dark objects with very large masses residing at the centres of galaxies are believed to be black holes. Due to the gravitational lensing effect, they would cast a shadow larger than their horizon size over the background, whose…
The supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), at the centre of the Milky Way undergoes regular flaring activity which is thought to arise from the innermost region of the accretion flow. We performed the monitoring observations of…
In the neighborhood of Sgr A*, several stars (S2, S12, S14, S1, S8, S13) enjoy an accurate determination of their orbital parameters. General Relativity predicts that the central black hole acts as a gravitational lens on these stars,…
Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) -- the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the center of our galaxy -- has been observed in most of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to X-rays. Diffuse gamma-ray emission has been observed around Sgr A* and a…
Millimeter very-long baseline interferometry (mm-VLBI) provides the novel capacity to probe the emission region of a handful of supermassive black holes on sub-horizon scales. For Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the…
We study the short-term effects of an intermediate mass black hole (IBH) on the orbit of star S2 (S02), the shortest-period star known to orbit the supermassive black hole (MBH) in the centre of the Milky Way. Near-infrared imaging and…
We have performed a parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) test of a black hole spacetime using observational data of the star S0-2/S2 orbiting the massive black hole at our galactic center Sgr A*. After introducing our PPN model of black hole…
The Galactic Center hosts a rotating disk of young stars between 0.05 and 0.5 pc of Sgr A*. The ``S-stars'' at a distance $<0.04$ pc, however, are on eccentric orbits with nearly isotropically distributed inclinations. The dynamical origin…
Imaging the vicinity of a black hole is one of the ultimate goals of VLBI astronomy. The closest massive black hole, Sgr A*, located at the Galactic center, is the leading candidate for such observations. Combined with recent VLBI recording…