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F.K. Baganoff, M.W. Bautz, W. Cui, J.P. Doty, G.R. Ricker (MIT), W.N. Brandt, E.D. Feigelson, G.P. Garmire, Y. Maeda, L.K. Townsley (PSU), M. Morris (UCLA), S.H. Pravdo (JPL)
We present a detailed analysis of the X-ray emission from a 50-ks Chandra ACIS-I observation of Sgr A* and the central parsec of the Galaxy. We have discovered an X-ray source coincident with the radio position of Sgr A* to within 0.35 arcsec, corresponding to a maximum projected distance of 16 light-days for an assumed distance to the center of our Galaxy of 8 kpc. This source is the third brightest X-ray source in the entire 17 arcmin x 17 arcmin field of view, and the second brightest heavily absorbed source. The brightest absorbed source in the field lies about 0.5 arcmin from Sgr A*. We estimate that the probability of detecting an absorbed source by random chance that is as bright or brighter than the Sgr A* candidate and that lies within 0.35 arcsec of the radio position is about 3.e-4. Implications of the measured flux and spectrum for various emission models are discussed.
This research was supported by NASA grant NAS8-38252.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: fkb@space.mit.edu