The Black Hole in the Galactic Center

Sagittarius A*: Extremely Compact

Slide 10 of 16
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Not only does VLBI demonstrate that Sagittarius A* is very heavy, it also indicates that Sagittarius A* is extremely compact. Usually VLBI has a very high resolution, alas, the radio light coming from Sagittarius A* passes through some nasty ionized medium in the Galaxy which blurs the image. If one goes to higher frequencies the blurring becomes less strong and the resolution of the telescope increases. You can see how dramatic this effect is if you go from 5 GHz to 43 GHz below.


(Figure: The size of Sagittarius A* as it would be seen with VLBI when increasing the frequency, here the sequence is 5, 8, 15, 32, and 43 GHz. We show Gaussian modelfits to the data.)


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Slide 10 of 16
Contact: Heino Falcke