English

The Galactic Center stellar cluster: The central arcsecond

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

With 10 years of high-resolution imaging data now available on the stellar cluster in the Galactic Center, we analyze the dynamics of the stars at projected distances 1.2\leq1.2'' from the central black hole candidate Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). We find evidence for radial anisotropy of the cluster of stars surrounding Sgr A*. We confirm/find accelerated motion for 6 stars, with 4 stars having passed the pericenter of their orbits during the observed time span. We calculated/constrained the orbital parameters of these stars. All orbits have moderate to high eccentricities. The center of acceleration coincides with the radio position of Sgr A*. From the orbit of the star S2, the currently most tightly constrained one, we determine the mass of Sgr A* to 3.3±0.7×1063.3\pm0.7\times10^{6}M_{\odot} and its position to 2.0±2.42.0\pm2.4 mas East and 2.7±4.52.7\pm4.5 mas South of the nominal radio position. The data provide compelling evidence that Sgr A* is a single supermassive black hole.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0304197,
  title  = {The Galactic Center stellar cluster: The central arcsecond},
  author = {R. Schoedel and R. Genzel and T. Ott and A. Eckart},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0304197},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 Figures; to be published in Astron. Nachr., Vol. 324, No. S1 (2003), Special Supplement "The central 300 parsecs of the Milky Way", Eds. A. Cotera, H. Falcke, T. R. Geballe, S. Markoff

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