Astronomy Picture of the Day -- M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

NASA ^ | February 05, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: The striking spiral galaxy M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting the more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based Subaru data have been reprocessed with amateur color image data to create this sharp view of the well-known galaxy. The processing results in a natural color appearance and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based instruments. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and is thought to host 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.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: NASA, ESO , NAOJ, Giovanni Paglioli; Processing: R. Colombari]

[SunkenCiv]

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[cripplecreek]

One of my favorite galaxies.

[cripplecreek]

BTW new pics of Ceres.

[mowowie]

Wow a perfect side view.
Nice Pic

[Grimmy]

Is that where all the illegal aliens in spaceships are coming from?

[SunkenCiv]

Ceres was, not inappropriately, the first in a series of asteroid discoveries.

[SunkenCiv]

Only the extraterrestrial haberdashers come from there.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree.

[cripplecreek]

That’s Hugh and Ceres.

[Organic Panic]

[The Cajun]

A sharper non rotating view of Ceres:

[A Navy Vet]

And we’re the center of the Universe? Pfft.

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, whaddayamean ‘we’? I’m alone here. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

I’m just glad no one has ever found a watermelon galaxy, or even a chitlins asteroid. And imagine the outcry if someone had pointed out that the surface of the C-G comet (the one that Rosetta probe visited) looked like pork rinds?

[SunkenCiv]

It’s a little known fact that Ceres was discovered by a marine biologist.

[The Cajun]

It’s a little known fact that Ceres was discovered by a marine biologist.

LOLOL!!!
Many points on that one!
One of the funniest episodes for me.

[Moonman62]

Here's one with a bit more rotation. Nice crater near the south pole and the white spot to the north.

[GeronL]

Isn’t that the golf ball they shot off the moon?

[mikrofon]

What about a conjunction of the asteroid & α Canis Majoris ;?