Related papers: Stellar Dynamics at the Galactic Center with an Ex…
This article reviews recent progress in observational determination of the properties of dark matter on small astrophysical scales, and progress towards the European Extremely Large Telescope. Current results suggest some surprises: the…
Recent studies of nearby globular clusters have discovered excess dark mass in their cores, apparently in an extended distribution, and simulations indicate that this mass is composed mostly of white dwarfs (respectively stellar-mass black…
Massive black holes (MBHs) with a mass below ~ 1e7 Msun are likely to reside at the centre of dense stellar nuclei shaped by 2-body relaxation, close interactions with the MBH and direct collisions. In this contribution, we stress the role…
[Abridged] To investigate the evolution in the relation between galaxy stellar and central black hole mass we construct a volume limited complete sample of 85 AGN with host galaxy stellar masses M_{*} > 10^{10.5} M_{sol}, and specific X-ray…
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…
We propose a dynamical mechanism for capturing stars around a massive black hole (MBH), which is based on the accumulation there of a very dense cluster of compact stellar remnants. This study is motivated by the presence of ~10 young…
The young stars near the supermassive black hole at the galactic center follow orbits that are nearly random in orientation and that have an approximately thermal distribution of eccentricities, N(e) ~ e. We show that both of these…
Using 25 years of data from uninterrupted monitoring of stellar orbits in the Galactic Center, we present an update of the main results from this unique data set: A measurement of mass of and distance to SgrA*. Our progress is not only due…
A new statistical method for pinpointing the massive black hole (BH) in the Galactic Center on the IR grid is presented and applied to astrometric IR observations of stars close to the BH. This is of interest for measuring the IR emission…
Most stellar remnants so far have been found in binary systems, where they interact with matter from their companions. Isolated neutron stars and black holes are difficult to find as they are dark, yet they are predicted to exist in our…
Establishing or ruling out, either through solid mass measurements or upper limits, the presence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centers of star clusters would profoundly impact our understanding of problems ranging from the…
Observations of the S-stars, the cluster of young stars in the inner 0.1 pc of the Galactic Center, have been crucial in providing conclusive evidence for a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Since some of the stars have…
Our current understanding of the stellar initial mass function and massive star evolution suggests that young globular clusters may have formed hundreds to thousands of stellar-mass black holes, the remnants of stars with initial masses…
We discuss the structure of a central stellar cluster whose dynamics is influenced by gravitation of a supermassive black hole and by the dissipative interaction of orbiting stars with an accretion disc. We also take the effect of disc…
The dense concentration of stars and high velocity dispersions in the Galactic centre imply that stellar collisions frequently occur. Stellar collisions could therefore result in significant mass loss rates. We calculate the amount of…
We analyze the mass distribution of stellar black holes derived from the light and radial velocity curves of optical stars in close binary systems using dynamical methods. The systematic errors inherent in this approach are discussed. These…
In most supersymmetic models, neutralino dark matter particles are predicted to accumulate in the Galactic center and annihilate generating, among other products, gamma rays. The EGRET experiment has made observations in this region, and is…
Context. Current constraints on distributed matter in the innermost Galactic Centre (such as a cluster of faint stars and stellar remnants, Dark Matter or a combination thereof) based on the orbital dynamics of the visible stars closest to…
Among the astrophysical systems targeted by LISA, stars on relativistic orbits around massive black holes (MBHs) are particularly promising sources. Unfortunately, the prediction for the number and characteristics of such sources suffers…
Using a sample of 126000 late-type galaxies from the SDSS, we analyzed stellar mass as a function of the dynamical mass. Stellar masses are estimated using eight stellar population synthesis (SPS) models with constant IMF, while dynamical…