Related papers: Bright X-ray flares from Sgr A*
The routinely flaring events from \sgras\ trace dynamic, high-energy processes in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole. We statistically study temporal and spectral properties, as well as fluence and duration distributions,…
In the last several years, a number of observing campaigns of the massive black hole Sgr A* has been carried out in order to address two important issues: one concerns the underluminous nature of Sgr A* with its bolometric luminosity being…
X-rays produced by compact flares co-rotating with a Keplerian accretion disc are modulated in time by Doppler effects. We improve on previous calculations of these effects by considering recent models of intrinsic X-ray variability, and…
We take advantage of a set of molecular cloud simulations to demonstrate a possibility to uncover statistical properties of the gas density and velocity fields using reflected emission of a short (with duration much less than the cloud's…
The compact radio source Sgr A*, believed to be the counterpart of the massive black hole at the Galactic nucleus, was observed to undergo rapid and intense flaring activity in X-rays with Chandra in October 2000. We report here the…
A large international effort is under way to assess the presence of a shadow in the radio emission from the compact source at the centre of our Galaxy, Sagittarius A$^*$ (Sgr A$^*$). If detected, this shadow would provide the first direct…
Tidal forces close to massive black holes can violently disrupt stars that make a close approach. These extreme events are discovered via bright X-ray and optical/UV flares in galactic centers. Prior studies based on modeling decaying flux…
Sgr A* is considered to be a massive black hole at the Galactic center and is known to be variable in radio, millimeter, near-IR and X-rays. Recent multi-wavelength observing campaigns show a simultaneous X-ray and near-IR flare, as well as…
It has long been suggested that supermassive black holes in non-active galaxies might be tracked down by occasional tidal disruptions of stars on nearly radial orbits. A tidal disruption event would reveal itself by a luminous flare of…
Luminous accreting stellar mass and supermassive black holes produce power-law continuum X-ray emission from a compact central corona. Reverberation time lags occur due to light travel time-delays between changes in the direct coronal…
The time-variable emission from the accretion flow of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center, has long been examined in the radio-to-mm, near-infrared (NIR), and X-ray regimes of the electromagnetic spectrum. However,…
SgrA$^*$, the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Center, exhibits flares in the X-ray, NIR, and sub-mm bands that may be interpreted within a hot spot model. Light curves and images of hot spots orbiting a black hole are…
The rapid and seemingly random fluctuations in X-ray luminosity of Seyfert galaxies provided early support for the standard model in which Seyferts are powered by a supermassive black hole fed from an accretion disc. However, since EXOSAT…
Mergers of spinning black holes can give recoil velocities from gravitational radiation up to several thousand km/s. A recoiling supermassive black hole in an AGN retains the inner part of its accretion disk. Marginally bound material…
We use a model of an accretion flow coupled with an emergent flare to interpret the latest 1.3mm VLBI measurements for Sagittarius A*. The visibility data constrained the distances from the flare center to the black hole center as $d_{\rm…
We have performed near-infrared monitoring observations of Sgr A*, the Galactic center radio source associated with a supermassive black hole, with the near-infrared camera CIAO and the 36-element adaptive optics system on the Subaru…
We summarize recent observations and modeling of the brightest Sgr A* flare to be observed simultaneously in (near)-infrared and X-rays to date. Trying to explain the spectral characteristics of this flare through inverse Compton mechanisms…
Several galaxies have exhibited X-ray flares that are consistent with the tidal disruption of a star by a central supermassive black hole. In theoretical treatments of this process it is usually assumed that the star was initially on a…
X-ray observations of Seyfert 1 galaxies offer the unique possibility of observing spectral variability on timescales comparable to the dynamical time of the inner accretion flow. They typically show highly variable lightcurves, with Power…
We present the longest, by a factor of two, near-infrared lightcurve from Sgr A* - the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center. Achieved by combining Keck and VLT data from one common night, which fortuitously had simultaneous…