Revelations in our own backyard: Chandra's unique Galactic Center discoveries.

Abstract

Before the launch of Chandra, our Galactic Center supermassive black hole, Sgr A*, had never been positively identified outside the radio bands. A great deal has changed in the past decade, starting with the discovery that our own backyard harbors a very weak, yet clearly active, galactic nucleus. I will review how this revelation has been a boon for accretion studies around black holes in general and has helped us place our own Galaxy in context within the active galactic nuclei (AGN) zoology. Chandra's exquisite resolution has also unveiled entirely new populations of faint sources and transients, as well as regions of extreme gas dynamics and hints of prior, more typical AGN-like activity in our Galactic Center.