GalaxyVirgo
The Sombrero Galaxy
A nearly edge-on spiral whose bright bulge and dark dust lane give it the silhouette of a wide-brimmed hat.
- Type
- Spiral galaxy, seen nearly edge-on
- Distance
- About 31 million light-years · 9.5 Mpc
- Diameter
- About 50,000 light-years
- Central black hole
- About 1 billion solar masses
- Designations
- M104 · NGC 4594
- Known for
- A prominent, dark dust lane
A galaxy in profile
NASA/STScI/AURA
Explore the galaxy
Scroll or pinch to zoom and drag to pan. Select a marker to read about the bulge, the dust lane, or the supermassive black hole at the centre.
An illustrative model · shown nearly edge-on · sizes and distances are not to scale
A galaxy in profile
The Sombrero Galaxy is a spiral galaxy viewed almost exactly edge-on, so its disc appears as a thin line crossed by a dark band of dust. Above and below the disc sits a large, bright bulge of old stars, giving the whole galaxy its hat-like shape.
It lies in the constellation Virgo, just within reach of modest telescopes, and is one of the easiest galaxies to recognise because of its striking silhouette.
The dust lane
The dark line across the Sombrero is a lane of dust in the plane of the disc. The dust absorbs the light of stars behind it, so it appears as a sharp, dark seam in photographs. Embedded in that disc are younger stars and star-forming regions that the dust partly hides.
Infrared observations see through much of this dust, revealing the disc's structure in wavelengths our eyes cannot detect.
A huge central black hole
The Sombrero's core hosts one of the most massive black holes measured in any nearby galaxy, with a mass of roughly one billion Suns. Its presence is inferred from the high speeds at which stars and gas orbit the centre, measured with spectroscopy from ground-based telescopes and Hubble.
Despite its size, the black hole is not particularly active, emitting little of the bright radiation seen from quasars. The galaxy's brilliant appearance comes mostly from its billions of stars, not from the black hole.
Stars and globular clusters
The Sombrero's bulge and halo are rich in old stars and globular clusters. Observations count roughly two thousand globular clusters around it, one of the largest known populations, tracing out an extensive halo around the bright disc.
Individual planets are far beyond our ability to detect at this distance. The galaxy's worlds, if they exist in numbers like our own Galaxy's, remain invisible to current telescopes.
Worth knowing
The Sombrero looks like a wide-brimmed hat.
Its central black hole weighs about a billion Suns.
It may hold one of the largest globular-cluster systems known.
Further reading
- NASA Hubble mission: Sombrero imagery and press releases.
- ESA/Hubble image archive: high-resolution views of M104.
- NASA Image and Video Library: more views of the Sombrero Galaxy.