The Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Waygalaxy. It is located at a distance of about 8 kiloparsecs in the brightest part of the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.
Because of cool interstellar dust along the line of sight, the Galactic Center cannot be studied at visible, ultraviolet or soft X-ray wavelengths. The available information about the Galactic Center comes from observations at gamma ray, hard X-ray, infrared, sub-millimetre and radio wavelengths.
The complex radio source Sagittarius A appears to be located almost exactly at the Galactic Center, and contains an intense compact radio source, Sagittarius A*, which many astronomers believe may coincide with a supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy. Accretion of gas onto the black hole, probably involving a disk around it, would release energy to power the radio source, itself much larger than the black hole. The latter is too small to see (in silhouette, of course) with present instruments.
O and CO. This is coordinated with observations with the infrared ISO satellite.
The Galactic nucleus, at a distance of about 8 kpc and hidden behind about 30 magnitudes of visual extinction by cool interstellar dust along the line of sight, cannot be studied at visible, ultraviolet or soft X-ray wavelengths.
The centre of the Milky Way in the emission and abroption lines of different molecules with the SEST and the VLA is being mapped.
Due to its relative proximity of around 8 kiloparsecs, the GalacticCentre is a perfect laboratory to examine the physical processes in a galactic nucleus.
A HKL colour composite of the GalacticCentre region.
Near-infrared high-resolution observations of the galacticcentre (GC) became possible since the beginning of the 1990s.
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