An Extended Star Formation History for the Galactic Center from Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS Observations

By D. Figer, R. Rich, Sungsoo S. Kim, Mark R. Morris, E. Serabyn. 2003

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer (NICMOS) observations as evidence that continuous star formation has created much of the central stellar cusp of the Galaxy. The data are the deepest ever obtained for a Galactic center population, being more than 50% complete for mF205W < 19.3, or initial stellar masses ≳2 M☉. We use Geneva and Padova stellar evolution models to produce synthetic luminosity functions for burst and continuous star formation scenarios, finding that the observations are fitted best by continuous star formation at a rate that is consistent with the recent star formation activity that produced the three massive young clusters in the central 50 pc. Further, it is not possible to fit the observations with ancient burst models, such as would be appropriate for an old population like that in Baade's window or NGC 6528.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0edb1d8ee7019290dc2df03384801c7e0a8182c9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. T. Alexander
2. F. Antonini
3. R. Genzel
4. H. Perets
5. F. Rasio
6. Clovis Hopman
7. B. Kocsis
8. P. Amaro-Seoane

In Instrumentation

1. T. Alexander
2. F. Antonini
3. R. Genzel
4. F. Rasio
5. A. McWilliam
6. C. Petrovich
7. R. Rich
8. A. Eckart

Citations in the corpus

• A CATALOG OF X-RAY POINT SOURCES FROM TWO MEGASECONDS OF CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER (2008, background): “The region encompasses about 1% of the Galactic stellar mass (Launhardt et al. 2002), and possibly up to 10% of the Galactic population of young, massive stars (Mezger & Pauls 1979; Figer et al. 2004).”
• The structure of the nuclear stellar cluster of the Milky Way (2006, methodology): “Genzel et al. (2003b) used the first NACO H- and K-band imaging data to present a new analysis of the stellar number density in the GC.”
• A Massive Cluster of Red Supergiants at the Base of the Scutum-Crux Arm (2007, background): “…of Astrophysics From the cluster mass and age derived here, RSGC2 joins the nearby RSGC1 (FMR06), Wd 1 (Clark et al. 2005), the Arches (Figer et al. 2002), Quintuplet (Figer et al. 1999), and Galactic center (Figer et al. 2004) clusters, in a growing list of Galactic analogs to superYstar clusters.”
• The 511 keV emission from positron annihilation in the Galaxy (2010, background): “Deep field observations of late-type stars with the NICMOS/HUBBLE (Figer et al., 2004) and with SINFONI/VLT (Maness et al., 2007) suggest that the star forming activity in that region has proceeded at a relatively steady rate, of the order of a few 10−2 M⊙/yr, over the past ∼10 Gyr.”
• Greatly Enhanced Merger Rates of Compact-object Binaries in Non-spherical Nuclear Star Clusters (2017, background): “Observations suggest in fact that a large fraction of the Milky Way NC was built up gradually in time through in-situ star formation episodes similar to the one from which the observed massive stars were formed (Figer et al. 2004; Pfuhl et al. 2011).”
• Composition of the galactic center star cluster - Population analysis from adaptive optics narrow band spectral energy distributions (2009, background): “The total K band luminosity function of the central parsec is considerably flatter than that of the galactic bulge, with a power law index αGC = 0.23 ± 0.02 (Schödel et al. 2007) compared to αbulge = 0.3 (Figer et al. 2004).”
• Stellar Remnants in Galactic Nuclei: Mass Segregation (2006, background): “This would in particular require ad hoc assumptions regarding the history and locations of star formation to account for a population with a variety of ages (Figer et al. 2004).”
• Massive Perturber-driven Interactions between Stars and a Massive Black Hole (2006, background): “About10 young stellar clusters with masses in the range102–105M⊙ and sizes of orderRp ∼ 1 pc were observationally identified (Figer et al. 1999, 2002; Maillard et al. 2004; Figer et al. 2004; Borissova et al. 2005).”
• Stellar Processes Near the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center (2005, background): “The stellar population in the GC is thus a mixture of the inner extension of the old bulge population and intermediate-age and young stars from more recent star formation epochs (Philipp et al.1999; Mezger et al.1999; Figer et al.2004).”
• MERGING BLACK HOLE BINARIES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED-LIGO DETECTIONS (2016, background): “…NSCs are characterized by complex star formation histories with a mixture of morphological components and different stellar populations spanning a wide range of characteristic ages (from 10 Myr to 10 Gyr) and metallicities (Figer et al. 2004; Rossa et al. 2006; Walcher et al. 2006; Do et al. 2015).”
• DISSIPATIONLESS FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE MILKY WAY NUCLEAR STAR CLUSTER (2011, methodology): “Dereddened LFs of the observed populations were generated by Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS data taken from Figer et al. (2004).”
• Abundances of Baade’s Window Giants from Keck HIRES Spectra. II. The Alpha and Light Odd Elements (2006, methodology): “…evidence for ongoing star formation in the nuclear region and modeling of the luminosity function in fields within 50 pc of the nucleus requires a constant star formation rate, with models dominated by early bursts of formation are ruled out by models of the luminosity function Figer et al. (2004).”