SgrB2

Abstract

Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) is an exceptionally massive (3 × 10^6 M⊙; de Vicente et al. 1996) giant molecular cloud located ~130 pc (Reid et al. 2009) from Sgr A* – the Milky Way Galaxy's central supermassive black hole – which is at a distance of ~8.5 kpc from Earth (Genzel et al. 2010). Sgr B2 is within the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Galaxy, a ~300 pc radius region around Sgr A* that exhibits widespread emission from complex organic molecules (COMs), with Sgr B2 containing the most complex identified to date. The Sgr B2 cloud is highly heterogeneous and composed of both compact (hot) and extended (cold) molecular material, molecular maser regions, and ultracompact continuum sources (Remijan et al. 2014).

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