NASA Image Reveals Hidden Heart of the ‘Sombrero Galaxy’

A brand new image snapped by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals the intricate details of the core of the distant “Sombrero Galaxy”.

This galaxy, officially known as Messier 104 (M104), is situated some 30 million light-years from our planet. Its bright center and the prominent, thick dust encircling its heart give it the appearance of a Mexican sombrero hat, hence its more charming nickname.

The infrared-light image captured by the JWST’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) reveals the galaxy in a totally different way from the visible-light images captured in the past by the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

In the new infrared JWST image, the cap of the “sombrero” appears to be missing above the galaxy’s core, as it is shining much less brightly. The outer ring of the galaxy, which appeared smoother in images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, but lumpy in the Hubble visible light images, is revealed in infrared for the first time.

From Earth, the Sombrero Galaxy appears in the constellation Virgo, and measures about 50,000 light-years across, making it around as wide as our own Milky Way. It is over ten times further away from us than our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, and was first discovered in 1781.

Observations suggest the Sombrero Galaxy houses one of the largest supermassive black holes ever discovered in a nearby galaxy.

It also has an exceptionally large number of globular star clusters—dense, spherical collections of hundreds of thousands of stars, bound tightly together by gravity—with around 2,000, compared to just 150–200 in the Milky Way.

In the JWST image, the dust around the outer edges of the galaxy is revealed, in which the MIRI detected carbon-containing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The presence of these molecules can indicate young star-forming regions, however, the Sombrero Galaxy has a very low rate of star formation.

“The rings of the Sombrero galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars per year, in comparison to the Milky Way’s roughly two solar masses a year,” NASA explained in a statement.

Some galaxies have much higher rates of star formation, and are often referred to as starburst galaxies. These galaxies—which include the Cigar Galaxy M82 and NGC 253—form stars at rates 10 to 100 times faster than normal galaxies, usually triggered by external events, such as galaxy mergers, interactions, or the inflow of gas.

At the center of the image lies the Sombrero’s galactic core, hiding its 9-billion-solar-mass supermassive black hole. Despite its gargantuan size, this galaxy’s active galactic nucleus is classified as low luminosity.

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