The Galactic Center stellar cluster: The central arcsecond

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0304197

From: Rainer Schoedel <rainer@mpe.mpg.de>

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 15:58:05 GMT   (73kb)

Authors:
R. Schoedel,
R. Genzel,
T.Ott,
A. Eckart

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

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 $leq1.2”$ 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
$3.3pm0.7 imes10^{6}$M$_{odot}$ and its position to $2.0pm2.4$ mas East and
$2.7pm4.5$ mas South of the nominal radio position. The data provide
compelling evidence that Sgr A* is a single supermassive black hole.

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