The Sombrero galaxy, commonly viewed in optical light (as shown at bottom, via Hubble), displays a vastly different set of featured in mid-infrared light (by JWST, top). At last, we’ve seen beneath the Sombrero’s hat, and can paint a coherent picture of this brilliant object. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
The Sombrero is the closest bright, massive, edge-on galaxy to us. JWST’s new image, taken with MIRI, finally shows what’s under its hat.
Since its discovery nearly 250 years ago, the Sombrero galaxy has delighted astronomers.
This image of the Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104, represents what an amateur astronomer can capture with a modest, modern setup, revealing a bright, dusty halo of shining stars with a prominent dust lane crossing the center. (Credit: Carsten Frenzl/flickr)
It appears nearly edge-on, inclined at a mere 6°.
This wide-field view of the Sombrero galaxy shows a 1.5° region of the sky, with two asterisms (or collections of bright stars) nearby: four stars in a hockey-stick configuration (jaws) just to the right of the galaxy, and the tetrahedron-like “stargate” at the lower-right. (Credit: Pat Freeman)
The Sombrero galaxy, shown in visible light and imaged by Hubble, is intrinsically the brightest galaxy within some ~35 million light-years of our Milky Way. One must look to the Virgo Cluster, some 50+ million light-years distant, to find significantly brighter, much more massive galaxies. (Credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
This view of the Sombrero galaxy comes from NASA’s Spitzer telescope, showing the inner part of the disk in near-infrared light, while hydrogen glows in red in the mid-infrared in an outer ring. This dual-nature galaxy has its disk-like component better revealed by infrared views. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/STScI)
Prominent dust lanes and spiral arms line a central disk.
