Sgr A*: A Laboratory to Measure the Central Black Hole and Stellar Cluster Parameters

Several stars orbit around a black hole candidate of mass 3.7 × 106 M⊙, in the region of the Galactic Center (GC). Looking for General Relativistic (GR) periastron shifts is limited by the existence of a stellar cluster around the black hole that would modify the orbits due to classical effects that might mask the GR effect. Only if one knows the cluster parameters (its mass and core radius) it is possible to unequivocally deduce the GR effects expected and then test them. In this paper it is shown that the observation of the proper motion of Sgr A ∗ , vSgr A ∗ = (0.4 ± 0.9) km s−1 (Reid and Bruthaler 2004), could help us to constrain the cluster parameters significantly and that future measurements of the periastron shifts for at least three stars may adequately determine the cluster parameters and the mass of the black hole. Subject headings: Gravitation — Galaxy: center — Physics of black holes 1.

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