The nucleus of starburst galaxy NGC 253 has been located with high resolution J-, H-, K-band imaging. It lies shrouded in a dense dust cloud with A_V_ ~> 24 and molecular mass ~6 x 10^4^ M_sun_ located ~2.2" northwest of the intensity peak in the J, H, and K maps. The nucleus is identified with the brightest 6 cm radio point source. The intensity peak itself has substantial emission from hot gas of at least 500 K. The other "hot spots" are merely holes in the dust, rather than intrinsically luminous areas. A dense structure of molecular gas of mass 5 x 10^4^ M_sun_ extends ~70 pc along the major axis. This structure shows evidence of curvature consistent with spiral arms. The molecular material/dust in the bar traces the 6 cm radio continuum emission. Dense knots of molecular gas are correlated with 6 cm radio peaks, suggesting that the fainter radio sources are H II regions rather than supernovae or supernova remnants.
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J. et al. (1994) studied this question.