The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104 (José Joaquín Pérez)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 104 · NGC 4594 · Sombrero Galaxy

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The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

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The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

One of most famous spiral galaxies is Messier 104, widely known as the "Sombrero" (the Mexican hat) because of its particular shape. It is located towards the constellation Virgo (the ‘virgin’), at a distance of about 30 million light-years and is the 104th object in the famous catalogue of deep-sky objects by French astronomer Charles Messier (1730 - 1817).

This luminous and massive galaxy has a total mass of about 800 billion suns, and is notable for its dominant nuclear bulge, composed mainly of mature stars, and its nearly edge-on disc composed of stars, gas, and dust. The complexity of this dust is apparent directly in front of the bright nucleus, but is also evident in the dark absorbing lanes throughout the disc. A large number of small, diffuse objects can be seen as a swarm in the halo of Messier 104. Most of these are globular clusters, similar to those found in our own Milky Way, but Messier 104 has a much larger number of them. This galaxy also appears to host a supermassive black hole of about 1 billion solar masses, one of the most massive black holes measured in any nearby galaxy, and 250 times larger than the black hole in the Milky Way. Despite having such a massive black hole at its centre, the galaxy is rather quiet, implying that the black hole is on a very stringent diet (from ESO)

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3566444
PixInsight job	L3W9TKVR1W5EMJHEOE74DZ7SD6P41O48
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	12h39m59s.999
RA (top/left)	12h40m39s.579
RA (top/right)	12h39m13s.527
RA (bottom/right)	12h39m19s.405
RA (bottom/left)	12h40m45s.549

Dec (center)	-11°37′26″.30
Dec (top/left)	-11°28′05″.28
Dec (top/right)	-11°29′53″.98
Dec (bottom/right)	-11°46′46″.34
Dec (bottom/left)	-11°44′57″.71

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The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

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The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

The Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104

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