GCNEWS
A Newsletter for Galactic Center Research
This Volume was edited by Angela Cotera, Heino Falcke & Sera Markoff
email: gcnews@aoc.nrao.edu
GCNEWS
A small but notable number of Galactic Center science results were presented at the AAS in Pasadena June 4-7. Mark Morris et al. presented deconvolved mid-infrared images, obtained at Keck; although Sgr A* is not obvious as a point source in these images, upper limits were given. The upper limits are still above the theoretically predicted values, but stay tuned. Doug Roberts et al. have derived new proper motion for the ionized gas in the central parsecs, and found accelerations in a few of the higher density gas blobs for the first time. Using VLBA observations of the astrometric reference sources used to establish the position and motion of Sgr A*, Geoffrey Bower et al. have concluded the reference sources are AGNs and, as a consequence, the proper motion of these source may introduce a 0.1 mas/year error to the positional determination of Sgr A*. There was also a poster by D. Halfen et al. on the first detection of NO and N2O in Sgr B2, which suggests a mean temperature of 100K in this region.
Don Figer et al. gave a talk on the results of a study of the radial velocities for stars in the central parsec based on high resolution NIR Keck spectroscopy. They did not find a correspondence between LSR velocity with position, and found no evidence for galactocentric radial motion. Susan Stolovy discussed HST NICMOS data, and was able to establish an upper limit on the NIR flux from a possible source located at the position of Sgr A*. Fred Banagoff et al. presented evidence for a flare in Sgr A* in the X-ray from Chandra observations (see article this issue). Finally, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh et al. gave a talk on Chandra observations of the Arches cluster which indicates that in addition to peaked X-ray emission coincident with specific massive star candidates in the cluster, there is diffuse X-ray emission extending well beyond the cluster, indicating outflow of hot gas from the combined stellar winds of cluster stars. Yusef-Zadeh also participated in a press conference on this research.
At long last we are able to give you definitive information on the next Galactic Center conference, tentatively titled GC02: The Central Kiloparsec. The science scope of the conference will include objects on the kiloparsec scale and the milliparsec scale, and everything in between. The workshop will be held on November 4-8, 2002, at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. This date was preferred by a slight majority of GCNEWS subscribers who responded to a recent poll. Thank you for responding! More information is given on the last page of this newsletter. We are sure this will be a very exciting workshop with many interesting discussions and are looking forward to see you in Hawaii next year.
The tempting location of the next Galactic Center workshop.