                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2022 April 23

                                 Messier 104
               Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive;
                Processing & Copyright: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

   Explanation: A gorgeous spiral galaxy, Messier 104 is famous for its
   nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes.
   Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the
   swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the
   galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, the Sombrero Galaxy. This
   sharp view of the well-known galaxy was made from over 10 hours of
   Hubble Space Telescope image data, processed to bring out faint details
   often lost in the overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge.
   Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the
   spectrum, and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About
   50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one
   of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy
   Cluster. Still, the spiky foreground stars in this field of view lie
   well within our own Milky Way.

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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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