M 104, the Sombrero galaxy, was discovered in 1781 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain, a colleague of Charles Messier and a comet hunter.
It is located 18 million light years from Earth, in the constellation Virgo. With a mass of 800 billion solar masses, it is one of the most massive in the Virgo galaxy cluster. At its center is a black hole with an estimated mass of one billion solar masses.
Interestingly M 104 has an extensive system of globular clusters, estimated to be around 2000, compared to the approximately 200 associated with the Milky Way. Like the Milky Way's globular clusters, those of M 104 have estimated ages from 10 to 13 billion years [1].
The galaxy is really too small for the field of view of the ASA 12N but the small pixil scale (0.71"/pixil) gave reasonable detail. I cropped the image down to around 1/3 of the original and also rotated it so that I could use the small cluster of bright stars balance the galaxy.
[1]
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-104-the-sombrero-galaxy
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