The most beautiful and detailed image of the Sombrero galaxy in visible light is a mosaic made up of six distinct observations made by Hubble between May and June 2003 with the ACS instrument [NASA / The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]

The Sombrero Galaxy

Also known as M104 and NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy is one of the most beautiful and studied deep-sky objects. About 31 million light-years away from us, it represents a strange hybrid between a spiral galaxy and an elliptical one. Massive and very bright, it is crowned by at least 1,900 globular clusters as well as an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy. A supermassive black hole of about one billion solar masses lurks in M104’s core

Sombrero’s names

One of the most beautiful deep-sky objects is undoubtedly the Sombrero galaxy, located near the southern border of the Virgo cluster. The curious name comes from the unusual shape of this galaxy. A large disk of dust, which from the Earth we observe almost edge-on, draws a profile that resembles the brim of the famous Mexican hat, while the bright galactic bulge recalls the crown of the sombrero, that is, the part in which the head is inserted [1].

The galaxy was discovered on May 11, 1781, by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain. William Herschel discovered it in turn in 1784, independently of Méchain. Charles Messier…