M104 - Sombrero Galaxy

We have a celebrity between us, this is one of the most photogenic and well known galaxies that is visible both in the northern and southern hemisphere. Is called the “Sombrero galaxy and Is located 28 million light-years from Earth, at the southern edge of the rich Virgo galaxies cluster. In the 19th century, some astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of our solar system. We know not that is a big galaxy which harbors a super-massive black hole with a mass of 1 billion suns at its center.

As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane exposing its distinctive cloud disk. It has a very definite bulge and this is why it was called sombrero, because it looked like the famous Mexican hat. Is somehow similar with our Milky Way because both have a bulge, which is made up from globular clusters of stars.