Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0603326

From: Shanil N. Virani [view email]

Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:05:37 GMT (263kb)

The hot stars in orbit around the M31 central supermassive black hole: are they young or old?

Authors: Pierre Demarque, Shanil Virani (Yale University)

Comments: 9 pages, 2 figures, submitted to New Astronomy for publication

The cluster of hot stars observed in orbit around the central black hole of M31 has been interpreted by Bender et al (2005) as a 200 Myr starburst. The formation of a population of young stars in close proximity to a massive black hole presents a difficult challenge to star formation theory. We point out that in a high stellar density environment, the course of stellar evolution is modified by frequent collisions and mergers. An old stellar population of evolved blue horizontal-branch stars and of merger products cannot be ruled out on the basis of the available data. Observations are suggested that would help distinguish between a ``young'' and ``old'' stellar population interpretation of the observations.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603326