The Giant Radio Galaxy 0319-45 (MSH 03-43)

The extended radio source 0319-453 (MSH 03-43) was observed with the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope as part of a program to study a large sample of southern extragalactic radio sources. The low level structure showed a ridge pointing towards the nearby source 0317-456, which also showed low level structure. It is suggested that the two sources are the asymmetric lobes of a radio galaxy identified with the magnitude 15 peculiar dust-land galaxy AM 0319-452. The galaxy redshift of z = 0.0633 and the radio size of 25.6 arcmin give a projected size of 1.27 Mpc (H = 100 kms−1 Mpc−1). Thus it is one of the largest radio galaxies.