Dusty Obscuring Disk in a Radio Galaxy

The elliptical galaxy NGC 4261 has a nuclear gas disk (1.7 arcsec = 100 pc) which is oriented perpendicular to the larger scale radio jet and lobes. This is consistent with the overall unification picture that radio galaxies with little optical emission are seen approximately edge on.

 

Unification figure for radio loud AGN. Doppler beaming of the jet can turn a lobe dominated AGN into a core dominated AGN.