The Galactic Center: An Interacting System of Unusual Sources

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh(1), Fulvio Melia(2), and Mark Wardle(3)


(1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. E-mail: zadeh@nwu.edu.,
(2) Department of Physics and Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. E-mail: melia@as.arizona.edu.,
(3) Special Research Centre for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. E-mail: wardle@physics.usyd.edu.au

Paper: Science 2000, Vol. 287, p. 85

Weblink: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5450/85


Abstract:

The region bounded by the inner tens of light years at the center of the Milky Way contains five principal components that coexist within the central deep gravitational potential well. These constituents are a black hole candidate (Sgr A*) with a mass equivalent to 2.6+/-0.2* 106 suns, a surrounding cluster of evolved stars, a complex of young stars, molecular and ionized gas clouds, and a powerful supernova-like remnant. The interaction of these components is responsible for many of the phenomena occurring in this complex and unique portion of the Galaxy. Developing a consistent picture of the primary interactions between the components at the Galactic Center will improve our understanding of the nature of galactic nuclei in general, and will provide with a better defined set of characteristics of black holes. For example, the accretion of stellar winds by Sgr A* appears to produce far less radiation than indicated by estimates based on models of galactic nuclei.


Preprints available from the authors at zadeh@oort.astro.nwu.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

Back to the gcnews home-page.