A Luminous Blue Variable candidate (LBVc) was recently recognized south of the
Pistol HII region near the Galactic Center.  Luminosity estimates for this
star range between 10^6.3 and 10^7 Lsun, which may make this the brightest
star known in the Galaxy (Eta Car is 10^6.6 Lsun).  These estimates do rely,
however, on the LBVc being located physically in the Galactic Center, i.e. at
a distance of about 8.5kpc.  There is also evidence, morphological and
energetic, that the Pistol consists of ejecta from the LBVc and that it is
being ionized by that star (now also known as the Pistol Star).  The Pistol
lies just 15" south of the well known Quintuplet cluster (AFGL 2004), named
after the 5 dusty "cocoon" stars dominating the mid-IR emission, but which
also contains many hot stars, specifically at least eight WR stars (4 WN and
4 WC), and over a dozen OB stars.  Due to their proximity (at least in
projection) to the Pistol, these stars may be partly responsible for ionizing
the Pistol, and in fact it is not inconceivable that the Pistol Star
originated in the Quintuplet.  Many of the above conjectures require that
Pistol, Pistol Star the Quintuplet be physically in the Galactic Center, and
to be physically close to each other.  Our goal is to obtain new estimates of
the extinction to these sources (via the silicate  absorption feature for the
stars, and via hydrogen recombination lines for the  HII region) to study
whether they are indeed close to each other along the line of sight.  We will
also observe a suite of mid-IR fine structure lines in the Pistol HII region.
This will provide a measure of the elemental abundance (to
test the theory that the Pistol HII region was ejected from the Pistol Star),
as well as a measure of the hardness of the exciting radiation.