Sagittarius A

Sagittarius A or Sgr A is a complex radio source at the center of the Milky Way. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius, and is hidden from view at optical wavelengths by large clouds of cosmic dust in the spiral arms of the Milky Way.

It consists of three components, the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, the spiral structure Sagittarius A West, and a very bright compact radio source at the center of the spiral, Sagittarius A*. These three overlap: Sagittarius A East is the largest, West appears off-center within East, and A* is at the center of West.

The two-dimensional size of Sagittarius A* has been determined, based on Very Long Baseline Array observations, which helps explain the context of jet disk and accretion disk models on the radio emission spectrum. These measurements were made through the use of a wavelength of 7 mm, enabling the size to be determined. The result was that Sagittarius A* was determined to be an elliptical Gaussian with a semi-major axis size of 35.4×12.6 R_☉ with an inclination of 95 degrees east of north. The observations for this finding were found from the detection of NIR (near infrared) flares, and X-ray flares that were spotted by NuSTAR. Both flares come from electron excitation, not an enhanced accretion rate onto the black hole, which means that not all high energy events produce variability at radio wavelengths.

A study done with the measured parallaxes and motions of 10 massive regions in the spiral arms of Sagittarius in the Milky Way where stars are formed. Data was gathered using the BeSSeL Survey with the VLBA, and the results were synthesized to discover the physical properties of these sections (called the Galactocentric azimuth, around −2 and 65 degrees). The results were that the spiral pitch angle of the arms is 7.3 ± 1.5 degrees, and the half-width of the arms of the Milky Way were found to be .2 kpc. The nearest arm from the Sun is around 1.4 ± 0.2 kpc away.

This feature is approximately 25 light-years in width and has the attributes of a supernova remnant from an explosive event that occurred between 35,000 and 100,000 BCE. However, it would take 50 to 100 times more energy than a standard supernova explosion to create a structure of this size and energy. It is conjectured that Sgr A East is the remnant of the explosion of a star that was gravitationally compressed as it made a close approach to the central black hole.