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arxiv: astro-ph/0601273 · v2 · submitted 2006-01-12 · 🌌 astro-ph

Clockwise Stellar Disk and the Dark Mass in the Galactic Center

classification 🌌 astro-ph
keywords starscenterdiskgalacticorbitalcentralclockwisedisks
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Two disks of young stars have recently been discovered in the Galactic Center. The disks are rotating in the gravitational field of the central black hole at radii r=0.1-0.3 pc and thus open a new opportunity to measure the central mass. We find that the observed motion of stars in the clockwise disk implies M=4.3+/-0.5 million solar masses for the fiducial distance to the Galactic Center R_0=8 kpc and derive the scaling of M with R_0. As a tool for our estimate we use orbital roulette, a recently developed method. The method reconstructs the three-dimensional orbits of the disk stars and checks the randomness of their orbital phases. We also estimate the three-dimensional positions and orbital eccentricities of the clockwise-disk stars.

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