HST Palpha Survey of the Galactic Center -- Searching the missing young stellar populations within the Galactic Center

Abstract

We present preliminary results of our \hst Pa$α$ survey of the Galactic Center (\gc), which maps the central 0.65$\times$0.25 degrees around Sgr A*. This survey provides us with a more complete inventory of massive stars within the \gc, compared to previous observations. We find 157 Pa$α$ emitting sources, which are evolved massive stars. Half of them are located outside of three young massive star clusters near Sgr A*. The loosely spatial distribution of these field sources suggests that they are within less massive star clusters/groups, compared to the three massive ones. Our Pa$α$ mosaic not only resolves previously well-known large-scale filaments into fine structures, but also reveals many new extended objects, such as bow shocks and H II regions. In particular, we find two regions with large-scale Pa$α$ diffuse emission and tens of Pa$α$ emitting sources in the negative Galactic longitude suggesting recent star formation activities, which were not known previously. Furthermore, in our survey, we detect $\sim$0.6 million stars, most of which are red giants or AGB stars. Comparisons of the magnitude distribution in 1.90 $μ$m and those from the stellar evolutionary tracks with different star formation histories suggest an episode of star formation process about 350 Myr ago in the \gc .

10 pages, 6 figures, Proceedings of the Galactic Center Workshop 2009, Shanghai