Prospects for testing the nature of Sgr A*'s NIR flares on the basis of current VLT- and future VLTI-observations

Understand

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive compact object at the center of the Galaxy, exhibits outbursts in the near infrared and X-ray domains.

• These flares are likely due to energetic events very close to the central object, on a scale of a few Schwarzschild radii.
• Optical interferometry will soon be able to provide astrometry with an accuracy of this order (~10 muas).
• In this article we use recent photometric near infrared data observed with the adaptive optics system NACO at the Very Large Telescope combined with simulations in order to deploy a method to test the nature of the flares and to predict the possible outcome of observations with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer.