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Newer, Sharper Images of the Sombrero Galaxy
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 03:31 pm ET
03 March 2000
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sombrero_galaxy_000304 If you could get a few million light-years closer to the Sombrero Galaxy, with it's hyper-luminous midsection, you might wish for a broad-brimmed hat of your own with which to shade your eyes. But here on Earth, at a safe distance of 50 million light-years, a new European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescope recently opened a wide eye toward the Sombrero. The results are snappy new images of the galaxy named after the Mexican straw hat.
The Sombrero Galaxy This image has been altered to highlight dust bands in the central plane of the Sombrero Galaxy, making it possible to follow the spiral structure almost all the way around. Dark areas around stars and galaxies result from the image processing. "The new images are scientifically very valuable because of their extraordinary sharpness and depth," said Richard West, a senior astronomer at the European Southern Observatory. "This makes it possible to perceive details better and possibly to detect new ones." The images, obtained by Peter Barthel from the Kapteyn Institute in the Netherlands, peer into the bright, bulging center, composed of a nucleus of older stars much like those in the middle of our own Milky Way. The round, fairly flat disk of the galaxy -- composed of stars, gas and complex lanes of dust -- is seen nearly edge-on, like a Frisbee frozen in space. West said that while researchers have only begun to study the results, it appears they will be able to chart the distribution of dust throughout the system. He also said the types of stars near the center of the image appear to be different from those further out. The Sombrero is suspected of harboring a central black hole that is billions of times more massive than our sun.A large number of small and slightly diffuse sources can be seen as a swarm in the halo of the galaxy. Most of these are globular clusters, similar to those found in our own galaxy. West said the precise colors of the clusters might reveal differences between them.Background galaxies are seen shining through the veil of the Sombrero, located in the constellation Virgo. The images, obtained by a newly commissioned telescope at the Paranal Observatory in the Andes, are among the best ever of the galaxy. They were made in January and released last week. The telescope is the third of four that will soon operate in concert to see distant objects in even greater detail.
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