Collision-ionized and photo-ionized plasma from our Galactic Center.
Abstract
The Galactic Center is a unique object; it shows high concentration of gas, stars and also unseen virial mass. X-ray observations found several X-ray binary sources and unresolved diffuse emissions at the Galactic Center. With the Ginga discovery of intense K-lines from highly ionized iron, diffuse X-rays due to a thin high temperature plasma are found to extend to about 100 pc. Since the thermal energy of this plasma is extremely large (1053 - 1054ergs) and the dynamical time scale is short (104 - 105yr), this may be a hint of high and time variable activity of the Galactic Center. The authors observed the diffuse emission with ASCA (Tanaka, Inoue and Holt 1994) which has high spatial and spectral resolution in the energy band up to 10 keV. They use 8.5 kpc as the distance to the Galactic Center.
- Publication:
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UV and X-ray Spectroscopy of Astrophysical and Laboratory Plasmas
- Pub Date:
- 1996
- Bibcode:
- 1996uxsa.conf..185M
- Keywords:
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- Galactic Center: X-Ray Binaries;
- Galactic Center: Activity;
- Galactic Center: Plasma