We have made the first VLBI synthesis images of the H2O maser emission associated with the central engine of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068. Emission extends about +/-300 km/s from the systemic velocity. Images with submilliarcsecond angular resolution show that the red-shifted emission lies along an arc to the northwest of the systemic emission. (The blue-shifted emission has not yet been imaged with VLBI.) Based on the maser velocities and the relative orientation of the known radio jet, we propose that the maser emission arises on the surface of a nearly edge-on torus, where physical conditions are conducive to maser action. The visible part of the torus is axially thick, with comparable height and radius. The velocity field indicates sub-Keplerian differential rotation around a central mass of about 1e7 Msun that lies within a cylindrical radius of about 0.65 pc. The estimated luminosity of the central engine is about 0.5 of the Eddington limit. There is no detectable compact radio continuum emission near the proposed center of the torus (T_B< 5e6 K on size scales of about 0.1 pc), so that the observed flat-spectrum core cannot be direct self-absorbed synchrotron radiation.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. To appear in ApJ Part 2. Also available at http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~vlbiweb

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Localized astronomical sources like a double stellar system, rotating neutron star, or a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way emit periodic gravitational waves. For a long time only a far-zone contribution of gravitational fields of the localized sources (plane-wave-front approximation) were a matter of theoretical analysis. We demonstrate how this analysis can be extended to take into account near-zone and intermediate-zone contributions as well. The formalism is used to calculate gravitational-wave corrections to the Shapiro time delay in binary pulsars and low-frequency (LF) pulsar timing noise produced by an ensemble of double stars in our galaxy.c We note that variables r0 and θ0 are not independent and can be expressed through r and θ d Function F (ν) is nomalized to unity, and n(r) = n(θ, r) is normalized to the total number of double stars in the ensemble.

At radio wavelengths, scattering in the interstellar medium distorts the appearance of astronomical sources. Averaged over a scattering ensemble, the result is a blurred image of the source. However, and showed that for an incomplete average, scattering introduces refractive substructure in the image of a point source that is both persistent and wideband. We show that this substructure is quenched but not smoothed by an extended source. As a result, when the scatter-broadening is comparable to or exceeds the unscattered source size, the scattering can introduce spurious compact features into images. In addition, we derive efficient strategies to numerically compute realistic scattered images, and we present characteristic examples from simulations. Our results show that refractive substructure is an important consideration for ongoing missions at the highest angular resolutions, and we discuss specific implications for RadioAstron and the Event Horizon Telescope.