High Resolution HI Observations of NGC 1068

Extract

Surprisingly few Seyfert galaxies have been mapped at near optical resolution in the 21–cm line of neutral atomic hydrogen, despite the fact that studies of the gaseous component hold out the possibility of identifying the cause of infall of gas to or outflow from the central region. We therefore decided to observe the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068 with the NRAO–Very Large Array. The spatial resolution of the final images is about 8 ″ or 700 parsec at a distance of 18 Mpc; the velocity resolution is 5.2 km s⁻¹.