M104, the Sombrero Galaxy!

Updated: Nov 8, 2022

Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.

Quick Stats

Name: Messier 104 (M104)
Nickname: Sombrero Galaxy
Distance: 28-30 million light-years
Constellation: Virgo (Celestial Northern and Southern Hemisphere)

Messier 104, or M104 for short, is a stunning peculiar galaxy viewed edge-on. Appropriately named the Sombrero Galaxy for its resemblance to the famous hat, it is located about 28-30 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. The constellation Virgo splits its time between the Northern and Southern Celestial Hemispheres—during the spring and summer it is visible in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere and during the fall and winter it is visible in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. M104 is famous for its sleek dust lanes viewed edge-on and appears to be a nice circular shape. While this is typically what spiral galaxies look like when viewed edge-on, because of its prominent central bulge and dust lanes, M104 is not quite what it seems. The Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed some hidden truths in the infrared.

The Spitzer Space Telescope views the Universe in infrared wavelengths of light. This is different from how the Hubble Space Telescope views light, which is in the visible wavelengths of light. Each wavelength of light reveals different characteristics of the galaxy. While Hubble shows a beautiful, sleek spiral galaxy, Spitzer found that the dust ring of M104 was much larger and more massive than had previously been measured. Thus, while it appears to be a spiral, the large dust ring is indicative of an elliptical galaxy. Spitzer has also revealed that the disk of M104 is actually warped, which suggests an interaction with another galaxy. When two galaxies interact with each other, usually by passing close by or actually colliding, the gravitational forces can warp both galaxies. The image below shows both the Hubble and Spitzer images and how they look combined.

Image credit: Infrared image- NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Kennictt (University of Arizona) and the SINGS Team. Visible image- Hubble Space Telescope/Hubble Heritage Team

M104 is about 49,000-60,000 light-years across and is thought to house a massive black hole at its center that is gobbling up matter. The black hole is billions of times the size of our own Sun! Its nucleus is classified as a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region, or LINER. These are just a lot of words to say that there is very weakly ionized gas present in the nucleus. The nucleus was observed using spectroscopy, where a specially designed instrument breaks down light into a spectrum (similar to how white light can turn into a rainbow) that is shown on a spectral line. Each element in the periodic table and the molecules it creates give off their own unique spectrum of light. From this, the elements that make something up, such as the elements of a galaxy or a star, can be devised.

The nucleus of M104 has ionized gas, which is where the atoms in a gas have been stripped of their electrons and thus carry an electrical charge. However, this gas is only weakly ionized, meaning that only a small portion of the gas is actually ionized versus the majority of it. The supermassive black hole at the center of M104 is thought to be providing the energy needed to ionize the gas. The nucleus of M104 has another unique feature- synchrotron radiation. Synchrotron radiation is created when electrons with a high velocity pass through strong magnetic fields and begin to oscillate. This is common when galaxies harbor active galactic nuclei. While the black hole has not been confirmed to be active, this type of radiation provides evidence that it might be.

M104 is also home to an extensive number of globular clusters at around 1,000- 2,000. That is about 10 times more than our own Milky Way galaxy has! Globular clusters are fairly old- around 10-13 billion years old and house older stars. It is thought that there are more globular clusters in this galaxy than a galaxy like our own due to the large central bulge. The globular clusters closer to the core of the galaxy contain more metals in their spectral composition than the ones further out. By studying these globular clusters, we can get information on how they have formed near the beginning of the Universe’s own formation!

The Sombrero Galaxy was among some of the first images that I processed when I first learned how to process data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The image at the top of this article is my most recent process of it, while the image below shows my very first process!

M104, the Sombrero Galaxy! This was my first process of this galaxy.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.

I was very eager to learn how to process this image using Hubble data. It is such a beautiful galaxy and was one of my favorite galaxies when I first got into astrophotography. I love its sleek look and how beautiful the dust lanes are and was beyond stoked to get to work with this data! Because Hubble is funded by the US government, the data is free to the public, since we pay for it! This image is such a stunning image and I want everyone to be able to download and use this data! Below are links to resources so you can process your own image! Questions? Email me at peculiargalexyastro@gmail.com or reach out to me here!

RESOURCES

This image was taken over multiple days by the Hubble Space Telescope. Those days were January 12-22 of 2005. It was an image created using three greyscale images assigned to the RGB channels in Photoshop CC. The images used were:

RED: hst_mos_0093324_acs_wfc_f625w_sci

GREEN: hst_mos_0093324_acs_wfc_f555w_sci

BLUE: hst_mos_0093324_acs_wfc_f435w_sci

Interested in learning how to process your own image? Check out the tutorial here!

To watch the work that goes into creating an image like this, check out this video here!

These images are associated with HST proposal 9714.

REFERENCES- ALL INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM THE SITES BELOW

M104, the Sombrero Galaxy!

Recent Posts

Comments