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.
2003 October 8 
Posted on 10/07/2003 9:24:32 PM PDT by petuniasevan
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.
2003 October 8
Explanation: Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge. Close inspection of the bulge in the above photograph shows many points of light that are actually globular clusters. M104's spectacular dust rings harbor many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand. The very center of the Sombrero glows across the electromagnetic spectrum, and is thought to house a large black hole. Fifty million-year-old light from the Sombrero Galaxy can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of Virgo.
| Right Ascension | 12 : 40.0 (h:m) |
|---|---|
| Declination | -11 : 37 (deg:m) |
| Distance | 50000 (kly) |
| Visual Brightness | 8.0 (mag) |
| Apparent Dimension | 9x4 (arc min) |
Below is a "jump-to" guide to finding M104. This is often the easiest way to locate an object with which the observer is not familiar.
M104 (below) in infrared. 2 Micron All Sky Survey.
![](http://pegasus.phast.umass.edu/2mass/archive/m104j.gif")
Go HERE for more multiwavelength images of M104.
I stop by every night and look at the Astronomy Picture of the Day. This one, as many others also have been, is extraordinarily beautiful. I must confess that when I see these pictures I usually am filled with awe and automatically start humming an old hymn titled "How Great Thou Art".
Sorry about that but I just can't seem to help myself. Hope you don't mind. Just thought I'd let you know that at least one person looks at your pictures and doesn't have the faintest inkling about the meanings of ascension, declinaton, etc., but still enjoys them immensely.
Thank you very much.
It's much simpler than you may think: it's just a coordinate system that allows you to define a location in the celestial "sphere." "Right ascension" is analogous to longitude, and "declination" is analogous to latitude.
It's really that simple.
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