Satellite infall and mass deposition on the Galactic Centre
Simulations of a small satellite galaxy falling into the inner 200 parsecs of the Milky Way test whether it could have fuelled the past activity around the central black hole.
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What was found
- The simulations follow a satellite of about 200,000 solar masses falling into the innermost ~200 pc of the Galaxy.
- They test an idea from earlier work: that such an infall could disturb gas on stable orbits in the central molecular zone.
- A large inflow about 10 million years ago would have explained the past high accretion onto the central black hole and the young stars near the centre.
- The hydrodynamical simulations give a much smaller inflow, too small to produce those effects.
This summary is written for a general audience. The paper has the full details.
Cite this paper
Gallego, S. G., & Cuadra, J. 2017, MNRAS, 467, L41–L45, doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slw254
@article{gallego2017,
author = {Gallego, Sofia G. and Cuadra, Jorge},
title = {{Satellite infall and mass deposition on the Galactic Centre}},
journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters},
year = {2017},
volume = {467},
pages = {L41--L45},
doi = {10.1093/mnrasl/slw254},
eprint = {1611.05254},
archivePrefix = {arXiv}
}