Avi Blizovsky
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The sombrero galaxy, so called because of its shape, can be seen in a photograph made by combining photographs taken by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes and published last week by NASA. The Sombrero Galaxy, or by its scientific name Messier 104, is 28 million light-years away from Earth. Its mass is about 800 million suns and its length is 50 thousand light years
Hubble's photograph was taken in the visible light range, and Spitzer's photograph - in the infrared range.
Spitzer therefore added details about the brightness of the galaxy, its bulwark core and the thick outer dust lanes. The infrared light marks the dust and causes the lumpy dust ring to become transparent. This allows a clear view of the inner disk of the stars within the dust ring.
The Sombrero Galaxy is one of the most massive objects in the Southern Hemisphere in the Virgo cluster. Seen from the Earth, it is only six degrees away from its equatorial plane.
Hubble photographed the galaxy in June 2003 and Spitzer added two photographs in June 2004 and January 2005 as part of the survey of nearby galaxies carried out using the telescope's infrared array camera.
The study is one of six studies designed to discover how stars form in different types of galaxies, and to provide an atlas of wide-spectrum galaxy images for future archival research. So far the team has observed 75 galaxies.
Astrophysics expert - galaxies
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