A Panoramic Hubble Space Telescope View of the Galactic center in Paschen-alpha Emission

Details A Panoramic Hubble Space Telescope View of the Galactic center in Paschen-alpha Emission A Panoramic Hubble Space Telescope View of the Galactic center in Paschen-alpha Emission

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21320401w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #204.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.266

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

We present the first large-scale hydrogen Paschen alpha line survey of the Galactic center, using the NICMOS instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The survey has been completed with 144 orbits of observations in two narrow bands at 1.87 and 1.90 micron, covering a region of 80 pc x 30 pc (36' x 13') around the central supermassive black hole (Sgr A*) of the Galaxy with a spatial resolution of 0.01 pc (0.2") at the distance of 8 kpc. The resultant spectacular image of the Paschen-alpha line emission gives an unprecedented high resolution and high sensitivity panoramic view of ionized gas, tracing massive stars and their impact on the interstellar medium in the nuclear environment of the Galaxy. The survey, combined with existing Chandra and Spitzer surveys as well as a wealth of multi-wavelength ground-based observations, allows us to address such questions as where and how massive stars form, how stellar clusters are disrupted, how massive stars shape and heat the surrounding medium, how various phases of this medium are interspersed, and how the environment interplays with the black hole. The Galactic center is a unique laboratory for studying such complex astrophysical phenomena, which may be common in nuclear regions of galaxies. The talk will concentrate on highlighting initial results as well as describing the motivation and design of the survey.

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