The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

Abstract

'The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way' collectsand presents recent advances in galactic centre research in a unifiedform by some of the researches at the forefront of the field. Thisbook presents an opportunity to review the observational evidence forthe best constrained black hole candidate currently known. In myopinion, the authors succeed in producing a good topical reference,appropriate for advanced students and working researchers, providingand excellent summary of the state of near-infrared results inparticular.While the title refers exclusively to the supermassive black holeassociated with the compact radio source Sagittarius A*, the text hasa broader focus, discussing the nuclear region of the galaxy. Indeed,this is necessary given that most of the restrictions upon thecharacteristics of the central supermassive black hole have beenobtained indirectly via stellar observations in it's vicinity.This also has the virtue of introducing a number of interestingadditional astrophysical mysteries associated with the galactic centre(e.g. the so-called 'paradox of youth', referring to the presence ofexcessively young stars).The first section of the book contains a primer on the astronomicaltechniques applied to the galactic Centre. As with the rest of thetext, the discussion of near-infrared techniques dominates, providingonly a short summary of radio interferometry, and optical throughgamma-ray techniques. While this primer is a useful introduction forthe working researcher, or advanced student, it is not exhaustive andthus presumes at least a passing familiarity with the methods discussed.The second and third sections are devoted to a summary of observationsand their astrophysical interpretation, respectively. Necessarilythere is considerable overlap between these and they may havebenefited from being combined. Nevertheless, each subsection isrelatively self-contained which, when combined with the numerous dataand graphs collected in the appendices, make this a valuable reference.As explicitly stated in the foreword, the text can not be complete,owing to the rapidity with which the field is advancing. To addressthis the authors maintain a website associated with the book containinglinks to recent publications. The success of the webpage will dependupon the familiarity of the reader with the field, as the material hasnot been presented in a digested, pedagogical form. Theincompleteness is my only substantive criticism of the book, given theexciting recent developments (improved constraints upon the physicalsize of Sagittarius A*, new polarization measurements of flares, etc)a revised edition may be in order.