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image data: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; processing & copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (DeepSkyColors.com)

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 central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy

Hubble Space Telescope data have been used to create this sharp view of the well-known galaxy

the processing results in a natural colour appearance and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based telescopes

also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and is host to 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
























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