======================================================================== G C N E W S * Newsflash * - The Newsletter for Galactic Center Research - gcnews@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/gcnews ======================================================================== Vol. 8, No. 10 Jun 5, 1998 Recently submitted papers: -------------------------- 1) An extraordinary cluster of massive young stars in the Milky Way's nucleus (Serabyn et al., Nature) 2) A supermassive Black Hole or a Compact Object Without Events Horizon (Verozub & Bannikova, LANL EPrint) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Email : figer@gc.astro.ucla.edu Title : An extraordinary cluster of massive young stars in the Milky Way's nucleus Author(s): E. Serabyn(1), D. Shupe(2), D. F. Figer(3) Institute: (1) California Institute of Technology, MS 320-47, Pasadena, CA 91125 (2) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MS 171-113, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 (3) Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095 Paper : to appear in Nature Weblink : http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~figer/papers.html Abstract: The mass distribution of newborn stars (the stellar initial mass function, or IMF) is key to the evolution of galaxies, as it determines whether a galaxy's interstellar medium is funneled predominantly into dim, long-lived, low-mass stars, as is the case in normal galactic disks, or into bright, short-lived, massive stars, as is perhaps the case in ``starburst'' nuclei. Our own Galactic nucleus is not a full-fledged starburst, but its star-formation rate per volume is nevertheless well above that of the Galactic disk (by a factor of ~ 10^3). Even so, the Milky Way's nuclear IMF remains uncertain, because high obscuration and the large background population of bright, elderly giant stars have impeded the detection of normal hydrogen-burning (or ``main-sequence'') stars. Our high-resolution infrared observations of a compact stellar cluster in the nucleus now reveal the presence of numerous young, massive main sequence stars, several of which may number among the Galaxy's most massive. Dwarfing all other known young Galactic clusters, the ``Arches'' cluster may in fact be a weaker analog of the ``super star-clusters'' found in starburst nuclei. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Email : verozub@gravit.kharkov.ua Title : A supermassive Black Hole or a Compact Object Without Events Horizon Author(s): L.V. Verozub, E.Yu. Bannikova Institute: Kharkov State University Paper : LANL E-print EPrint : astro-ph/9805299 Abstract: Previously it was shown that gravitation theory allows the existance of supermassive stable compact configurations of the degenerated electronic ga s (L.V.Verozub, Astr. Nacr. 317 (1996) 107 ) without events horizon. In the present paper the simplest model of such kind of objects in gas environment has been considered. It is shown that at the spherically symmetric accretio n onto the object the luminosity is about 10^37 erg/s for the mass accretion rate of the order of M=3 10^-6 M_o/year . The vawelength of the radiation maximum is about 400 - 500 A. There is an ionization zone around the central objects with the radius about 10^-3pc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (Older versions of the Newsflash can be found at the gcnews web-page) ======================================================================== Edited by Angela Cotera Heino Falcke (cotera@ipac.caltech.edu) (hfalcke@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For Abstract submission please send the (La)Tex file of your paper to gcnews@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de ========================================================================