To describe M104 is to make a list of superlatives. 

It has one of the highest absolute magnitudes of the galaxies within about 30 million light years of us.  Its nucleus is intensely bright despite the fact it is nearly devoid of new, blue stars.  This leads to an overall reddish hue and a glow that is difficult to see through to make out details inside the perfect ring of dust.  This ring shines in infrared and is thought to be the primary source of star formation.  

At the core is a supermassive black hole with a mass a billion times that of the Sun.  This again, is the most massive of any known in any nearby galaxy which leads me to assume it is the source of the intense brightness.  

M104 is also home to a high concentration of globular clusters.  As many as 2000 are estimated.  Running StarXterminator and looking at the unscreened stars, you see a preponderance of "stars" with similar brightness and little color surrounding the galaxy.  I doubt that the Milky Way randomly bunched dim stars in line with this galaxy so I assume many of the globulars are seen here in the hazy glow.  

Doing very light stretches of the linear data showed me more detail inside the dust ring than I had seen in prior images.  Dust lanes inside the ring could be seen, with some seeming to rise up slightly from the flat plane of the center.  I decided to see if I could retain this inner detail while still showing the bulge of brightness that is primary characteristic of the galaxy.  Meanwhile, there are several quite small background galaxies scattered about.  The largest, to the lower right of M104, is a quite pretty little spiral nearly face on.  I measured it at about 100 pixels or a bit less than 30 arc-seconds in diameter.  A small interacting pair are just below the core and slightly left and these two measure 12x4 arc seconds in total!  I'd love to know how distant these are.

To best see the interior dust lane detail use the full resolution view.