The center of the milky way

Abstract

This article intends to provide a brief introduction to current Galactic center research. Its approach is observational and it is focused on the massive black hole, Sagittarius A*, and on the Milky Way nuclear star cluster, which surrounds the latter. These two components together are thought to make up > 90% of the mass in the central few parsecs. The principal topics tackled in this very brief review are mass of and distance to Sagittarius A*, basic properties of the nuclear star cluster, the surprising absence of an observable stellar cusp around the black hole, star formation in the central 0.5 pc, and hypervelocity stars.