Encyclopedia > Sagittarius A

  Article Content

Sagittarius A

Sagittarius A is a complex radio source at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy. It is located in the sky in the Sagittarius constellation.

It consists of three components, the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, the spiral structure Sagittarius A West, and a very bright compact radio source at the centre of the spiral, Sagittarius A*.

Many astronomers believe that there is evidence that there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Sagittarius A* is agreed to be the most plausible candidate for the location of this supermassive black hole.

An international team led by Rainer Schödel[?] of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics[?] observed the motion of the star S2[?] near to Sagittarius A* for a period of ten years, and obtained evidence that Sagittarius A* is a highly massive compact object. This is compatible with, and strong evidence in support of, the hypothesis that Sagittarius A* is a black hole.

From examining the Keplerian orbit of S2, they determined the mass of Sagittarius A* to be 3.7 ± 1.5 million solar masses, confined in an volume with a radius of 17 light-hours or less.

References

  • Schödel, R. et al. "A star in a 15.2-year orbit around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way." Nature, 419, 694 - 696, (2002).

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
David McReynolds

... Of American Activism - David McReynolds" - Book by Larry Gara: Greenwood Press. 1999, March-April - [[1] ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 38.4 ms