Paper

The gas streamer G1-2-3 in the Galactic Center

Drescher, A, Henry, D, Snik, F, Glauser, A M, Baruffolo, A, Shimizu, T, Tacconi, L J, Lightfoot, J, Cuadra, J, Ott, T, Agapito, G, Lutz, D, Carbonaro, L, G Di Rico, Gillessen, S, Puglisi, A, Dolci, M, Riccardi, A, Macintosh, M, Hartl, M, A Di Cianno, Kenworthy, M, Bourdarot, G, Lunney, D, Briguglio, R, ster Schreiber, N M, A Agudo Berbel, Cresci, G, Feuchtgruber, H, Ribeiro, D C, Black, M, Mang, F, Cao, Y, Rabien, S, Russell, C M P, Pearson, D, Sturm, E, Deysenroth, M, Keller, C, Huber, H, Calderon, D, Genzel, R, Dallilar, Y, Valentini, A, Piran, T, Esposito, S, Doelman, D, Xompero, M, Ferruzzi, D, Eisenhauer, F, Davies, R, I Di Antonio, Salasnich, B, Waring, C, Fantinel, D, Rau, C, Joharle, S, Taylor, W, Bonaglia, M, Grani, P, M Sadun Bordoni, Mannucci, F, Burkert, A, Kravchenko, K

2025

Overview

The black hole in the Galactic Center, Sgr A*, is prototypical for ultra-low-fed galactic nuclei. The discovery of a hand-full of gas clumps in the realm of a few Earth masses in its immediate vicinity provides a gas reservoir sufficient to power Sgr A*. In particular, the gas cloud G2 is of interest due to its extreme orbit, on which it passed at a pericenter distance of around 100 AU and notably lost kinetic energy during the fly-by due to the interaction with the black hole accretion flow. 13 years prior to G2, a resembling gas cloud called G1, passed Sgr A* on a similar orbit. The origin of G2 remained a topic of discussion, with models including a central (stellar) source still proposed as alternatives to pure gaseous clouds. Here, we report the orbit of a third gas clump moving again along (almost) the same orbital trace. Since the probability of finding three stars on close orbits is very small, this strongly argues against stellar-based source models. Instead, we show that the gas streamer G1-2-3 plausibly originates from the stellar wind of the massive binary star IRS16SW. This claim is substantiated by the fact that the small differences between the three orbits - the orientations of the orbital ellipses in their common plane as a function of time - are consistent with the orbital motion of IRS 16SW.

• Publisher: Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
• Subject: Binary stars / Clumps / Galactic nuclei / Kinetic energy / Orbits / Stellar winds