DR. ABHIJEET BORKAR

The Center of the Milky Way, referred to as the Galactic Center, is a very complex environment, with a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), sitting at the dynamical center. Sgr A* is surrounded by a massive stellar cluster within 50pc. The dense cluster in the central parsec is comprised of late-type red giants, AGB-stars, He-stars, as well as post main sequence Wolf-Rayet stars and luminous blue variable stars. Many of these stars are strong radio and bright infrared sources,exhibiting prominent SiO emission, which have been collectively used to determine the precise position of Sgr A*. In this talk, the speaker will present the results of the observations of the Galactic Center at 3mm wavelength using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The upgraded backend of the telescope providing bandwidth of 2 GHz with resolution of 1 MHz, and our observations spanning five years makes this the largest dataset of 3 mm observations of the Galactic Center. The speaker will discuss the detection of 11 SiO maser sources, their positions and proper motions around Sgr A*. The maser emission of these sources has been found to be highly variable over long period.