The Sombrero Galaxy (M104) lies in Virgo, about 31 million light years away. We see it almost perfectly edge-on, and that perspective gives it the shape that earned its name: an enormous bright central bulge, cut along its rim by a lane of dark dust.
That swollen core is made of old stars and is surrounded by an unusual number of globular clusters — nearly two thousand, ten times the Milky Way's. At the centre hides a supermassive black hole of about a billion solar masses, among the most massive known in nearby galaxies.
The dark lane is not a gap: it is a ring of cold dust and gas seen in profile, and it is there that M104 still forms new stars.
← Back to the gallery