Fitting the Galactic Center Gas Emission with CubeFit
POSTER
Abstract
The Center of our Galaxy is a complex, multi-scale, multi-phase environment. Thanks to its proximity, it allows us to peer into the galactic core at unrivaled resolution. The characterization of the interplay between different components in this region can shed light on the mechanisms regulating a galactic nucleus. In this study, we characterize the diffuse emission in the central ~10 x 5 pc of the Galaxy. To do so we analyzed data from the K-band multi-object spectrograph (KMOS) at the VLT in K-band, with the line-fitting algorithm CubeFit. This algorithm is very well-suited to characterize extended emission as it allows the preservation of the observation's resolution across the observed field and extracts low signal-to-noise lines. We characterized the ionized and molecular gas distribution and dynamics in this complex region through the extraction of maps of emission lines' physical parameters, such as line flux intensity, radial velocity, and width.
*Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
Presenters
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Samantha Adams
- University of Rhode Island