The nucleus of Centaurus A

At less than 4 Mpc away, Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the nearest massive elliptical galaxy, the nearest radio galaxy, and the nearest recent merger. It is the ideal laboratory to study the connection between merging, massive black holes, the source of radio jets, and merger-induced star formation in detail. Using Naos-Conica and SINFONI at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), we obtained adaptive optics (AO) assisted data at unprecedented spatial resolution. We demonstrate that thorough kinematical modelling of AO data is feasible and leads to an accurate measurement of the black hole mass. We find that depending on their ionisation level, different gas species display different flux distributions and velocity structures. In this respect, integral-field-unit data are crucial to identify non-gravitational gas motions. The H2 gas kinematics inside the central r