Deep Chandra Imaging of the Central 20 Parsecs of the Galaxy: X-ray Filaments and Extended Structures

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The Galactic center was observed for 0.5 Msec with the ACIS-I instrument on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory between 22 May 2002 and 04 June 2002, with the primary goal of measuring short-term temporal fluctuations from SgrA* (reported separately by Baganoff at this meeting). A wealth of detail was observed in the ubiquitous, extended emission and over 2000 point sources were detected in the 17'x17' field of view. Diffuse X-ray emission is extended all along the Galactic plane, supplemented by a strong extended source identified with Sgr A East (Maeda et al. 2002, ApJ 570, 671). In addition, a strong X-ray complex appears at L=0.013, B=-0.054, and has no known counterpart at other wavelengths. Perhaps the most suggestive structure is a pair of apparent bipolar X-ray lobes placed roughly symmetrically about Sgr A* at distances of 8.5 pc. These lobes are oriented perpendicular to the Galactic plane, raising the possibility that they have resulted from collimated ejections from the vicinity of SgrA*. The spectra of these features will be discussed in the context of this interpretation. On smaller scales, a number of filamentary X-ray structures, some with radio counterparts, have been found within the extended emission structures. The alternative hypotheses that these be edge-on shocks or linear magnetic filaments akin to nonthermal radio filaments will be discussed. In addition to the X-ray filaments, some other known radio sources are found to have X-ray counterparts, but the overall X-ray/radio correlation is relatively weak. Finally, the spatial relationship between dense interstellar clouds and edges or discontinuities in the extended X-ray emission has been examined in order to decide whether these are absorption edges attributable to foreground absorption or whether they represent density-bounded edges to the hot, X-ray emitting gas distribution. This work was supported by NASA, under grant GO2-3115B.

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