M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

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.