Abstract
Observations of the Galactic Centre (GC) have accumulated a multitude of 'forensic' evidence indicating that several million years ago the centre of the MilkyWay galaxy was teeming with star formation and accretion-powered activity - this paints a rather different picture from the GC as we understand it today. We examine a possibility that this epoch of activity could have been triggered by the infall of a satellite galaxy into the MilkyWay which began at the redshift of z = 8 and ended a few million years ago with a merger of the Galactic supermassive black hole with an intermediate-mass black hole brought in by the inspiralling satellite.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2574-2584 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
Volume | 430 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 21 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Centre - galaxy
- Galaxy
- Interactions
- Kinematics and dynamics - galaxy
- Nucleus - galaxies
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science