Related papers: Non-Acceleration of Sgr A*: Implications for Galac…
The spin and quadrupole moment of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center can in principle be measured via astrometric monitoring of stars orbiting at milliparsec (mpc) distances, allowing tests of general relativistic "no-hair"…
We present 3D kinematic observations of stars within the central 0.5 pc of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster using adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopy from the Keck telescopes. Recent observations have shown that the cluster has a…
In Sgr A* at the Galactic center, by far the closest and easiest supermassive black hole we can study, the observational evidence is increasingly pointing to the presence of a compact, hot, magnetized disk feeding the accretor. In such…
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…
In the first two papers of this series, we determined the position of Sgr A* on infrared images, by aligning the positions of red giant stars with positions measured at radio wavelengths for their circumstellar SiO masers. In this paper, we…
Empirically determining the averaged variations of the orbital parameters of the stars orbiting the Supermassive Black Hole (SBH) hosted by the Galactic Centre (GC) in Sgr A* is, in principle, a valuable tool to put on the test the General…
In recent years, the evidence for the existence of an ultra-compact concentration of dark mass associated with the radio source Sgr A* in the Galactic Center has become very strong. However, an unambiguous proof that this object is indeed a…
(ABRIDGED) We present in detail our new 3D numerical models for the accretion of stellar winds on to Sgr A*. In our most sophisticated models, we put stars on realistic orbits around Sgr A*, include `slow' winds (300 km/s), and account for…
In the present paper some consequences of the hypothesis that the supermassive compact object in the Galaxy centre relates to a class of objects without event horizon are examined. The possibility of the existence of such objects was…
It is shown that the matter concentration observed through stellar motion at the galactic center (Eckart & Genzel, 1997, MNRAS, 284, 576 and Genzel et al., 1996, ApJ, 472, 153) is consistent with a supermassive object of $2.5 \times 10^6$…
A star cluster in a galactic nucleus sinks toward the galactic center due to dynamical friction. As it spirals inward, the cluster loses mass due to stellar evolution, relaxation driven evaporation, and tidal stripping, eventually…
The presence of massive stars (MSs) in the region close to the Galactic Center (GC) poses several questions about their origin. The harsh environment of the GC favors specific formation scenarios, each of which should imprint characteristic…
The center of our Galaxy is known to host a massive compact object, Sgr A$^*$, which is commonly considered as a super-massive black hole of $\sim 4\times 10^6$ M$_\odot$. It is surrounded by a dense and massive nuclear star cluster, with a…
Nowadays we believe that a typical galaxy contains about $10^7$ stellar-mass black holes and a single super-massive black hole at its center. According to general relativity, these objects are characterized solely by their mass $M$ and by…
We show that the time-dependent Doppler effect should induce measureable deviations of the time history of the projected orbit of a star around the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center (SgrA*) from the expected Keplerian history.…
Radio images of the Galactic Center supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), are dominated by interstellar scattering. Previous studies of Sgr A* have adopted an anisotropic Gaussian model for both the intrinsic source and the…
It is widely believed that Sgr A$^*$, located at the center of our Galaxy, is a supermassive black hole. Recent observations of its shadow and long-term monitoring of the S2 star have provided compelling evidence supporting this hypothesis.…
The recent detection of significant linear polarization at mm and sub-mm wavelengths in the spectrum of Sgr A* (if confirmed) will be a useful probe of the conditions within several Schwarzschild radii ($r_S$) of the event horizon at the…
A powerful outburst of X-ray radiation from the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the center of the Milky Way is believed to be responsible for the illumination of molecular clouds in the central ~100 pc of the Galaxy (Sunyaev et al., 1993,…
The discovery of radio pulsars in compact orbits around Sgr A* would allow an unprecedented and detailed investigation of the spacetime of the supermassive black hole. This paper shows that pulsar timing, including that of a single pulsar,…