M104: The Sombrero Galaxy
The striking spiral galaxy
M104 is famous
for its nearly edge-on
profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes.
Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars,
the swath of cosmic dust lends a
broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting
a more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy.
Hubble Space Telescope data have been used to
create
this sharp
view of the
well-known galaxy.
The processing results in a natural color appearance
and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's
bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based
telescopes.
Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen
across the spectrum and
is host to a central
supermassive black hole.
About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away,
M104 is one of the
largest galaxies at the southern edge of the
Virgo Galaxy Cluster.