TY - JOUR
T1 - Discovery of the Tadpole Molecular Cloud near the Galactic Nucleus
AU - Kaneko, Miyuki
AU - Oka, Tomoharu
AU - Yokozuka, Hiroki
AU - Enokiya, Rei
AU - Takekawa, Shunya
AU - Iwata, Yuhei
AU - Tsujimoto, Shiho
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the NRO staff and all members of the JCMT team for operating the telescope. T.O. acknowledges the financial support of JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) No. 20H00178. S.T. acknowledges support from JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists grant No. JP19K14768.
Funding Information:
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, and Center for Astronomical Mega-Science (as well as the National Key R&D Program of China with No. 2017YFA0402700). Additional funding support is provided by the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, and participating universities and organizations in the United Kingdom and Canada.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - In this paper, we report the discovery of an isolated, peculiar compact cloud with a steep velocity gradient at 2.′6 northwest of Sgr A*. This “Tadpole” molecular cloud is unique owing to its characteristic head-tail structure in the position-velocity space. By tracing the CO J = 3-2 intensity peak in each velocity channel, we noticed that the kinematics of the Tadpole can be well reproduced by a Keplerian motion around a point-like object with a mass of 1 × 105 M ⊙. Changes in line intensity ratios along the orbit are consistent with the Keplerian orbit model. The spatial compactness of the Tadpole and absence of bright counterparts in other wavelengths indicate that the object could be an intermediate-mass black hole.
AB - In this paper, we report the discovery of an isolated, peculiar compact cloud with a steep velocity gradient at 2.′6 northwest of Sgr A*. This “Tadpole” molecular cloud is unique owing to its characteristic head-tail structure in the position-velocity space. By tracing the CO J = 3-2 intensity peak in each velocity channel, we noticed that the kinematics of the Tadpole can be well reproduced by a Keplerian motion around a point-like object with a mass of 1 × 105 M ⊙. Changes in line intensity ratios along the orbit are consistent with the Keplerian orbit model. The spatial compactness of the Tadpole and absence of bright counterparts in other wavelengths indicate that the object could be an intermediate-mass black hole.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/aca66a
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/aca66a
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85146527652
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 942
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 46
ER -