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Stellar Orbits at the Center of the Milky Way
Author(s) -
Mouawad N.,
Eckart A.,
Pfalzner S.,
Moultaka J.,
Straubmeier C.,
Spurzem R.,
Schödel R.,
Ott T.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/asna.200385073
Subject(s) - physics , milky way , astrophysics , stellar dynamics , astronomy , galaxy , stars , stellar physics , galactic center , stellar kinematics , stellar evolution
During the past ten years, measurements of stellar proper motion, and radial velocities (Eckart et al. 2002, Genzel et al. 2000, Ghez et al. 2000) as well as variable X‐ray emission (Baganoff et al. 2001) near the center of theMilkyWay have convincingly proven the presence of a super‐massive 3 million solar masses black hole in the center of our Galaxy. We discuss the possible amount of the unresolved mass present at the inner cusp, and its translation into Newtonian periastron‐shifts for stellar orbits in the central cluster. For this purpose we use a 4 th ‐order Hermite integrator. Further calculations provide valuable additional information on the three dimensional distribution and dynamics of the He‐Stars. We also discuss how future observations with infrared interferometers (LBT, VLTI, Keck) will help to improve our understanding of the dynamics and distribution of the stars in this region.