Cornelia Müller FAU Erlangen, Dr. Remeis Sternwarte Bamberg & ECAP

Zooming into Centaurus A - Subparsec scale imaging with TANAMI (pdf)

The radio galaxy Centaurus A is the closest AGN at a distance of ~3.8 Mpc. Due to its proximity, Cen A is a key target for studying extragalactic jets. Multi-epoch Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of Cen A conducted in the framework of the TANAMI program offer an exceptional opportunity to study this AGN on a linear scale as small as 0.015 pc. I will give a short overview of the Southern hemisphere VLBI monitoring program “TANAMI” and will focus on the first results of the ongoing analysis of Cen A. With the first epoch TANAMI dual-frequency images at an angular resolution of 0.7x0.4 mas we can construct the best resolved spectral index map of the sub-parsec scale jet-counterjet system of Cen A. We can identify multiple possible sites as the origin of gamma-ray emission recently detected by Fermi/LAT. Investigating the gamma-ray/radio connection in Cen A is crucial for our understanding of the formation and broadband emission mechanism of extragalactic jets.