The JWST Galactic Center Survey -- A White Paper
Rainer Schoedel, Steve Longmore, Jonny Henshaw, Adam Ginsburg, John Bally, Anja Feldmeier, Matt Hosek, Francisco Nogueras Lara, Anna Ciurlo, M\'elanie Chevance, J. M. Diederik Kruijssen, Ralf Klessen, Gabriele Ponti, Pau Amaro-Seoane, Konstantina Anastasopoulou, Jay Anderson

TL;DR
This white paper advocates for a comprehensive JWST NIRCam survey of the Milky Way's Galactic Center to address fundamental questions about its structure, star formation history, and stellar populations, providing a valuable community resource.
Contribution
It proposes a large-scale, multi-epoch, multi-wavelength JWST survey of the Galactic Center, outlining its scientific goals and expected legacy impact.
Findings
Anticipated detailed 3D structure and kinematics of gas and stars.
Insights into ancient and recent star formation history.
Assessment of the universality of star formation and the initial mass function.
Abstract
The inner hundred parsecs of the Milky Way hosts the nearest supermassive black hole, largest reservoir of dense gas, greatest stellar density, hundreds of massive main and post main sequence stars, and the highest volume density of supernovae in the Galaxy. As the nearest environment in which it is possible to simultaneously observe many of the extreme processes shaping the Universe, it is one of the most well-studied regions in astrophysics. Due to its proximity, we can study the center of our Galaxy on scales down to a few hundred AU, a hundred times better than in similar Local Group galaxies and thousands of times better than in the nearest active galaxies. The Galactic Center (GC) is therefore of outstanding astrophysical interest. However, in spite of intense observational work over the past decades, there are still fundamental things unknown about the GC. JWST has the unique…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations · Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation
