With its striking, hat-like appearance, the Sombrero Galaxy captivates observers in the night sky. We are looking at the galaxy almost directly from the side and can see a massive, dark band of interstellar dust and gas stretching across the bright core.
It has an unusually large, brightly glowing central bulge and a wide, round halo of billions of old stars. Hidden at the heart of M104 is one of the most massive black holes in our cosmic neighborhood, with a mass of about one billion solar masses—roughly two hundred and fifty times that of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way.
Although the Sombrero Galaxy appears completely symmetrical, peaceful, and smooth from the outside, its halo proves that it was a true “galaxy-eater” in the past. It is the chaotic legacy of a gigantic collision with another galaxy. My image, exposed for about 14 hours, shows this in detail. A massive, very faint stream of stars winds around the galaxy like Saturn’s rings. These are the remnants of a smaller satellite galaxy that was literally torn apart and absorbed by the enormous gravitational forces of the Sombrero Galaxy.