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Here's the spectacular scene over at the Sombrero galaxy [1]

['Allan Rose Hill']

Date: 2024-12-02

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured this stellar image of Messier 104 (M104), better known as the Sombrero galaxy. Located 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, the Sombrero galaxy was discovered in 1781 but given the nickname later due to its bright nucleus and symmetrical ring of dust clouds. In the latest image though, the galaxy looks more like a target. (The video below compares images from the Spitzer, Hubb, and Webb telescopes.)

From NASA:

In Webb's mid-infrared view of the Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104 (M104), the signature, glowing core seen in visible-light images does not shine, and instead a smooth inner disk is revealed. The sharp resolution of Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) also brings into focus details of the galaxy's outer ring, providing insights into how the dust, an essential building block for astronomical objects in the universe, is distributed. The galaxy's outer ring, which appeared smooth like a blanket in imaging from NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope, shows intricate clumps in the infrared for the first time[…]

Even the supermassive black hole, also known as an active galactic nucleus, at the center of the Sombrero galaxy is rather docile, even at a hefty 9-billion-solar masses. It's classified as a low luminosity active galactic nucleus, slowly snacking on infalling material from the galaxy, while sending off a bright, relatively small, jet.

Also within the Sombrero galaxy dwell some 2,000 globular clusters, collections of hundreds of thousands of old stars held together by gravity. This type of system serves as a pseudo laboratory for astronomers to study stars — thousands of stars within one system with the same age, but varying masses and other properties is an intriguing opportunity for comparison studies.

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