New observations of the gas cloud G2 in the Galactic Center

Understand

We present new observations of the recently discovered gas cloud G2 currently falling towards the massive black hole in the Galactic Center.

• The new data confirm that G2 is on a highly elliptical orbit with a predicted pericenter passage mid 2013.
• The updated orbit has an even larger eccentricity of 0.966, an epoch of pericenter two months later than estimated before, and a nominal minimum distance of 2200 Schwarzschild radii only.
• The velocity gradient of G2 has developed further to 600 km/s FWHM in summer 2012.