Sombrero Galaxy
A galaxy resembling a broad-brimmed Mexican hat. Seen nearly edge-on, its disk is crossed by a dark dust lane that looks like the brim of a hat.
- Distance · size
- about 30 million ly
- Scale
- an enormous central bulge
Image
What it looks likeWith its disk almost aligned with our line of sight, this galaxy appears in "edge-on" profile. Above its bright, swollen central bulge, a thick, dark dust lane cuts across the galaxy like the wide brim of a sombrero, which is how it earned its nickname. It makes a striking impression, like a silvery-white hat floating in the dark.
Science
The scienceThe Sombrero Galaxy (M104) is tilted just about 6 degrees from edge-on to our line of sight, and is distinguished by its unusually large, bright central bulge and the dark dust lane crossing it. A supermassive black hole of roughly a billion solar masses is known to lurk at its center, and it is encircled by some 2,000 globular clusters. It lies about 30 million light-years away in the direction of Virgo.