Morphology of the Galactic Center with NuSTAR

The inner arcminutes of the Galaxy contains the highest concentration of high-energy sources in the Milky Way. The supermassive black hole, pulsar wind nebulae (PWN), supernova remnants, X-ray binaries, and hot interstellar gas are copious emitters of X-rays and gamma-rays. NuSTAR provides a view of the hard X-ray (3-79 keV) band, a critical bridge between the soft X-ray and gamma-ray emission, with unprecedented angular resolution. I will present the first sub-arcminute images of the Galactic Center above 20 keV, obtained with NuSTAR. The hard X-ray emission from the Galactic Center is dominated by a diffuse component extending along the Galactic plane and a strong point-like source, spatially consistent with the ultra-high energy gamma-ray emission detected by HESS. The dominance of these sources provides new insight into possible hard X-ray emitting populations near Sgr A*, including black hole LMXBs, CVs, neutron stars, PWN and non-thermal filaments, dark matter, and the hard X-ray source previously reported by INTEGRAL.

Host: Fred Baganoff