J/ApJ/951/148ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/951/148doi:10.26093/cds/vizier/ba-xq-4mCDSNishiyama S.Funamoto N.Schodel R.2026-07-02T11:59:51Z2025-09-26T13:01:39ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frgalactic-centerinfrared-photometryextinctiontwo-color-diagramsExtinction toward the Galactic Center (GC) is extreme and limits observations of its stars to the infrared. In addition, the extinction varies on scales of arcseconds. It is therefore highly challenging to distinguish between different stars photometrically and to identify young, massive, or intermediate-age stars that can trace recent star formation. Here we report the results of near-infrared imaging observations of a 6.0'x3.3' region at the GC that encompasses the northwest part of the nuclear star cluster and parts of the nuclear stellar disk. We carried out the observations with the wide-field camera MOIRCS of the Subaru Telescope, using three narrowband (NB) filters. Two of the filters trace the stellar continuum, while we use the third one to measure the strength of the CO absorption features that are prominent in the spectra of cool giants, shallower in the spectra of warmer stars, and absent in young massive stars. Thus, we aim to distinguish between old late-type giants and young and intermediate-age stars. We have found 131 candidates of young and intermediate-age stars. The magnitude limit is ~11.25 in the extinction-corrected K-band magnitude. The contamination of the candidates by old giants is estimated to be 26%. We show that our method allows us to identify correctly four out of five spectroscopically confirmed massive stars, and 68 of 75 spectroscopically confirmed cool stars (91%). Our results suggest that imaging observations with a CO NB filter can be complementary to other methods to identify massive stars in the GC.2023ApJ...951..148Nhttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/951/148CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicerelated-toJ/ApJ/589/225 : Chandra X-ray sources toward Galactic Center (Muno+, 2003)J/A+A/457/637 : UBVJHK synthetic phot. of Galactic O stars (Martins+, 2006)J/MNRAS/371/38 : X-ray observations of the Galaxy center (Wang+, 2006)J/A+A/499/483 : NIR obs. of sources in galactic center (Buchholz+, 2009)J/ApJ/703/30 : Counterparts to Chandra X-ray sources. I. (Mauerhan+, 2009)J/ApJS/181/110 : Galactic center X-ray sources (Muno+, 2009)J/A+A/511/A18 : NIR observations of stars near SgrA* (Schoedel+, 2010)J/MNRAS/417/114 : HST/NICMOS Galactic Center survey catalogue (Dong+, 2011)J/A+A/549/A57 : Young, massive star candidates in Sgr A* (Nishiyama+, 2013)J/A+A/570/A2 : Sp. & radial velocities of nuclear stars (Feldmeier+, 2014)J/ApJ/821/44 : Star motions in the nuclear cluster of the MW (Fritz+, 2016)J/A+A/617/A65 : Stellar population of the Arches cluster (Clark+, 2018)J/A+A/618/A2 : Quintuplet cluster updated stellar census (Clark+, 2018)J/A+A/609/A26 : Galactic Center old stars distribution (Gallego-Cano+, 2018)J/A+A/610/A83 : GALACTICNUCLEUS: JHKs imaging survey (Nogueras-Lara+, 2018)J/A+A/623/A83 : Blue stragglers Wd1-27 and Wd1-30a spectra (Clark+, 2019)J/A+A/631/A20 : GALACTICNUCLEUS imaging survey. II. (Nogueras-Lara+, 2019)J/MNRAS/494/396 : Metallicity distribution in GC (Feldmeier-Krause+, 2020)J/A+A/641/A102 : MW nuclear star cluster HKs photometry (Schoedel+, 2020)J/ApJ/905/173 : Gal. center compact radio sources from JVLA (Zhao+, 2020)J/A+A/649/A83 : Milky Way nuclear disk KMOS survey (Fritz+, 2021)J/MNRAS/500/3213 : 2D kinematics of massive stars (Libralato+, 2021)J/A+A/653/A133 : GALACTICNUCLEUS IV. (Nogueras-Lara+, 2021)J/ApJ/930/16 : Massive YSOs in the GC. II. IRTF spectra (Jang+, 2022)https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/951/148https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/951/148http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/951/148https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/951/148https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/951/148http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/951/148GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/ApJ/951/148/table2 (Candidates of young and intermediate age populations)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/951/148/table2?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/951/148/table2?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/951/148/table2?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true266.41934-28.997330.0055555555555555566/28830https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/ApJ/951/148?format=asciiInfrareddefaultJ/ApJ/951/148/table2Candidates of young and intermediate age populationsrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintSeq[1/131] Internal identifiermeta.id;meta.mainintRAJ2000[266.32/266.44] Right Ascension (J2000)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000[-29/-28.9] Declination (J2000)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainNL19Display data from Nogueras-Lara+ 2019, J/A+A/631/A20 within 0.2"meta.ref.urlintnullableJmag[15.16/21.1]? J band magnitude (1)magphot.mag;em.IR.Jfloatnullablee_Jmag[0.004/0.14]? Uncertainty in Jmag (1)magstat.error;phot.mag;em.IR.JfloatnullableHmag[12.55/17.18] H band magnitude (1)magphot.mag;em.IR.Hfloate_Hmag[0.003/0.04] Uncertainty in Hmag (1)magstat.error;phot.mag;em.IR.HfloatKsmag[10.11/14.88] K_s_ band magnitude (1)magphot.mag;em.IR.Kfloate_Ksmag[0.003/0.05] Uncertainty in Ksmag (1)magstat.error;phot.mag;em.IR.KfloatAKs[1.39/3.13] K_s_ band interstellar extinction; Section 3.2magphys.absorptionfloatNBcol[0.04/0.25] Subaru/MOIRCS corrected (NB225-NB2315) color (2)magphot.color;em.IR.K;em.IR.Kfloatsigma[2/7.83] Deviation from the color of the RGB stars (3)stat.stdevfloatSepSgrA[38.6/325.7] Distance from Sgr A*arcsecpos.angDistancefloatch[1/2] Detector channelinstr.setupintAliasSource aliasmeta.idchar