The Sombrero galaxy, officially named Messier 104 (M104), is widely photographed. And now the Hubble Space Telescope has provided a rich new view.
In a photo released today, the galaxy's bright, bulbous core is as prominent as ever, and hallmark dust lanes are visible too. The Sombrero, named for the broad-brimmed and high-topped Mexican hat, is a spiral galaxy somewhat like our own Milky Way. But it is seen nearly edge-on from our vantagepoint.
The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. It is just beyond the reach of naked-eye observations but can be spotted with small telescopes. It resides amid a Southern Hemisphere cluster of galaxies called Virgo.
The new photograph reveals some of the Sombrero's nearly 2,000 globular star clusters. These are dense, ancient groupings of stars that are typically 10 billion to 15 billion years old. There are 10 times more globular clusters in Sombrero compared to our Milky Way, Hubble astronomers say.
Near the core of the galaxy is a second, smaller disk that's embedded in the larger galactic disk. That inner disk is tilted slightly with respect to the outer one. X-ray emissions from M104 suggest a lot of material is being superheated as it falls toward a central black hole, one that probably packs the mass of a billion Suns, astronomers said.
