Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  HD110086  ·  HD110251  ·  HD110283  ·  M 104  ·  NGC 4594  ·  Sombrero Galaxy
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Messier 104 — Sombrero Galaxy — NGC 4594, Mario Wunderlich
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Messier 104 — Sombrero Galaxy — NGC 4594

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Messier 104 — Sombrero Galaxy — NGC 4594, Mario Wunderlich
Powered byPixInsight

Messier 104 — Sombrero Galaxy — NGC 4594

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Description

Messier 104's peculiar name comes from its prominent dust lane that encircles the galaxy, its oversized central bulge, and its nearly edge-on orientation to the Milky Way— which results in its likeness to a Mexican sombrero.

At 105,000 light-years in diameter, the Sombrero Galaxy is slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy, and it is suspected to have a massive 1 billion solar-mass black hole at its center, significantly larger than our Milky Way's Sagittarius A*, which is estimated at 400 million solar masses.

It's located in the Virgo constellation just bordering Corvus, nearly 32 million light-years away.

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