HST Observations of the Stellar Distribution Near Sgr A*
  We present HST/NICMOS data to study the surface brightness distribution of
stellar light within the inner 10" of Sgr A* at 1.4, 1.7 and 1.9 microns. We
use these data to independently examine the surface brightness distribution
that had been measured previously with NICMOS and to determine whether there is
a drop in the surface density of stars very near Sgr A*. Our analysis confirms
that a previously reported drop in the surface brightness within 0.8" of Sgr A*
is an artifact of bright and massive stars near that radius. We also show that
the surface brightness profile within 5" or ~0.2 pc of Sgr A* can be fitted
with broken power laws. The power laws are consistent with previous
measurements, in that the profile becomes shallower at small radii. For radii >
0.7" the slope is beta=-0.34\pm0.04 where Sigma is proportional to r^beta and
becomes flatter at smaller radii with beta=-0.13\pm0.04. Modeling of the
surface brightness profile gives a stellar density that increases roughly as
r^-1 within the inner 1" of Sgr A*. This slope confirms earlier measurements in
that it is not consistent with that expected from an old, dynamically-relaxed
stellar cluster with a central supermassive black hole. Assuming that the
diffuse emission is not contaminated by a faint population of young stars down
to the 17.1 magnitude limit of our imaging data at 1.70$\mu$, the shallow cusp
profile is not consistent with a decline in stellar density in the inner
arcsecond. In addition, converting our measured diffuse light profile to a
stellar mass profile, with the assumption that the light is dominated by K0
dwarfs, the enclosed stellar mass within radius r < 0.1 pc of Sgr A* is ~
3.2x10^4 M_solar (r/0.1 {pc})^2.1.
