Abstract

Invited Talk - Splinter Compact

Thursday, 15 September 2022, 14:00   (SFG 1020 / virtual Compact)

Observation of dust-enshrouded objects; Star formation close to a supermassive black hole?

Florian Peißker
Universität zu Köln

The environment of the supermassive black hole Sgr~A* in the center of our Galaxy harbors various exciting objects targeting unresolved questions. For example, the nature of the Galactic center object G2 was debated throughout the literature. While the “Paradox of Youth” described the character of the stellar cluster around Sgr~A* as early-type, dust-enshrouded objects such as G2 marked a new challenging chapter for Galactic center observations and theories due to their even younger age. Because the main-sequence stars of the cluster around Sgr~A* primarily dominate the continuum K-band emission, G2 was classified as a coreless gas and dust cloud. A proposed cloud disruption during the periapse passage in 2014 accompanies this classification. Consequently, the flare activity of Sgr~A* would have been increased. However, based on post-pericenter data, none of these scenarios are valid. In my talk, I will present a large data baseline to show that this object is a compact dust-enshrouded stellar candidate on a Keplerian orbit around the supermassive black hole. Furthermore, I will outline that G2 shares common parameters with other dusty objects in the direct vicinity of Sgr~A*.