Massive stars and the creation of our Galactic Center

By D. Figer. 2002

328 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our Galactic Center hosts over 10% of the known massive stars in the Galaxy. The majority of these stars are located in three particularly massive clusters that formed within the past 5 Myr. While these clusters are extraordinary, their formation repesents about half of the total inferred star formation rate in the Galactic Center. There is mounting evidence that the clusters are just present-day examples of the hundreds of such similar clusters that must have been created in the past, and whose stars now comprise the bulk of all stars seen in the region. I discuss the massive stellar content in the Galactic Center and present a new analysis that suggests that effects of continuous star formation in the Galactic Center can be seen in the observed luminosity functions newly-obtained HST/NICMOS and Gemini AO data.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/14bac874e2ce1e4cf4a113516866e0023850a113

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Citations in the corpus

The Stellar Cusp around the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center (2003, methodology): “Furthermore, the properties of the bright emission-line stars are essentially identical to the massive stars in the Quintuplet and Arches clusters, 30–50 pc away from Sgr A*, in much lower density environments (Figer et al. 1998, 1999; Cotera et al. 1999; Figer 2003).”
Thermal physics, cloud geometry and the stellar initial mass function (2005, background): “The strongest evidence for the existence of a top-heavy IMF may be provided by the Arches cluster, the best-studied luminous young cluster in the Galactic centre region, a region of exceptionally intense massive star formation (Figer 2003, 2005; Stolte 2003; Stolte et al. 2002, 2005).”
The Galactic WC stars Stellar parameters from spectral analyses indicate a new evolutionary sequence (2012, background): “Gamen & Niemela (2003) detected O8-9 type absorption lines superimposed on its spectrum.”
A High Spatial Resolution X-Ray and Hα Study of Hot Gas in the Halos of Star-forming Disk Galaxies. I. Spatial and Spectral Properties of the Diffuse X-Ray Emission (2003, methodology): “In Figure 1 we plot the estimated gas consumption timescales for the galaxies in our sample, along with the normal and starburst galaxies from Kennicutt 1998a, against the IRAS 60 to 100 m flux ratio. The gas consumption timescale is simply the ratio of the total gas mass (atomic plus molecular gas)”
WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, background): “…al. (2010), [7] McClintock & Remillard (2006), [8] Orosz et al. (2014), [9] Cowley (1992), [10] Orosz et al. (2009), [11] Barret et al. (1996a), [12] Orosz (2003), [13] Orosz et al. (1998b), [14] Orosz et al. (2011a), [15] Reid et al. (2011), [16] Caballero-Nieves et al. (2009), [17] Hynes (2005),…”
How Massive Single Stars End Their Life (2002, background): “Uncertainty in the ExplosionMechanism The mechanism whereby the collapse of the iron core in a massive star results in a strong explosion has been debated for decades.”
The Two Young Star Disks in the Central Parsec of the Galaxy: Properties, Dynamics, and Formation (2006, background): “…to note in this context that the other two young, massive star clusters in the central 50 pc, the Arches andQuintuplet clusters, have comparable stellar masses (104M ), stellar content (WC/WN, etc.), ages (2–7 Myr), and (flat) mass functions (Figer et al. 1999; Figer 2003; Stolte et al. 2005).”
A multiwavelength view on the dusty Wolf-Rayet star WR 48a ★ (2014, background): “The infrared variability of WR 48a suggests that it is a long-period episodic dust maker with short-term ‘flares’ superimposed on a much gradually changing emission (Williams 1995, Williams et al. 2003).”
Massive Perturber-driven Interactions between Stars and a Massive Black Hole (2006, background): “The ongoing star formation in the central∼ 100 pc implies the presence of a large reservoir of massive stars there, which are indeed observed in the centralfew × 10 pc both in dense clusters and in the field (Figer et al. 1999; Figer 2003; Muno et al. 2006).”
Intermediate - mass black holes (2003, background): “These mass estimates currently range from ∼ 4M⊙ (GRO 0422+32) to 14 ± 4M⊙ (GRS 1915+105; see Orosz 2002 for an updated table).”
THE METALLICITY EVOLUTION OF INTERACTING GALAXIES (2011, result): “Instead, we change the gas recycling parameter, allowing gas to be returned from the stellar state back to the ISM.”
Binarity in carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars (2014, background): “…1976) contains UV-bright O-starsand a WC5 star (Oey & Smedley 1998), and produces a wind-blown super-bubble 120 pc in size traced by several indicators including Hα and [S II] HST imaging (Chen et al. 2000), XMM-Newton X-ray imaging (Bomans et al. 2003), and Spitzer IRAC imaging (Chu et al. 2005).”