The importance of being eccentric: stars and gas in the Galactic center

Thu, April 14, 2016

The center of our Galaxy is home to a supermassive black hole, SgrA*, and a nuclear star cluster a million times more dense than our local neighborhood. In this talk I will present the latest observations of the stars and gas clouds that live in this extreme environment. I’ll show how their surprising dynamics helps explain a wealth of observational data from event horizon scales all the way out to the Galactic halo.