MEASURING DISTANCE AND PROPERTIES OF THE MILKY WAY'S CENTRAL SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE WITH STELLAR ORBITS

@article{Ghez2008MEASURINGDA,
  title={MEASURING DISTANCE AND PROPERTIES OF THE MILKY WAY'S CENTRAL SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE WITH STELLAR ORBITS},
  author={Andrea M. Ghez and Samir Salim and Nevin N. Weinberg and J. R. Lu and Tuan Do and J. K. Dunn and Keith Y. Matthews and Mark R. Morris and Sylvana Yelda and Eric Edward Becklin and Ted Kremenek and Milos Milosavljevic and Jill Naiman},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal},
  year={2008},
  volume={689},
  pages={1044-1062}
}
We report new precision measurements of the properties of our Galaxy's supermassive black hole. Based on astrometric (1995-2007) and radial velocity (RV; 2000-2007) measurements from the W. M. Keck 10m telescopes, a fully unconstrained Keplerian orbit for the short-period star S0-2 provides values for the distance (R_0) of 8.0±0.6 kpc, the enclosed mass (M_(bh)) of 4.1±0.6x10^6 M☉ and the black hole's RV, which is consistent with zero with 30 km/s uncertainty. If the black hole is assumed to be… Expand
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