We present the first near-infrared K -band long-baseline interferometric measurement of the nucleus of the prototype Seyfert 2 Galaxy NGC 1068 with resolution \lambda / B \sim 10 mas obtained with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer ( VLTI ) and the two 8.2 m diameter Unit Telescopes UT 2 and UT 3 .
The adaptive optics system MACAO ( Multi Application Curvature Adaptive Optics ) was employed to deliver wavefront-corrected beams to the K -band commissioning instrument VINCI .
A squared visibility amplitude of 16.3 \pm 4.3 % was measured for NGC 1068 at a sky-projected baseline length of 45.8 m and azimuth angle 44.9 deg .
This value corresponds to a FWHM of the K -band intensity distribution of 5.0 \pm 0.5 mas ( 0.4 \pm 0.04 pc at the distance of NGC 1068 ) if it consists of a single Gaussian component .
Taking into account K -band speckle interferometry observations ( Wittkowski et al . [ ] ; Weinberger et al . [ ] ; Weigelt et al . [ ] ) , we favor a multi-component model for the intensity distribution where a part of the flux originates from scales clearly smaller than \sim 5 mas ( \lesssim 0.4 pc ) , and another part of the flux from larger scales .
The K -band emission from the small ( \lesssim 5 mas ) scales might arise from substructure of the dusty nuclear torus , or directly from the central accretion flow viewed through only moderate extinction .