Sombrero Galaxy (M104)

Sombrero Galaxy (M104) — galaxy, shown live in Cosmoscope, a real-time 3D map of the universe.

A glowing bulge of old stars brimmed by a knife-thin ring of dark dust — the unmistakable hat-shaped galaxy, seen almost perfectly edge-on.

Type
Edge-on spiral with vast bulge
Distance
31 million light-years
Halo
Wrapped in ~2,000 globular clusters

Seeing Sombrero Galaxy (M104) in real time

Sombrero Galaxy (M104) is placed at its true position on the sky and at its real measured distance, not as a flat backdrop. Fly out from the Sun in the live 3D view and watch it change from a point of light into structure as you approach, with the scale bar showing just how far out you have travelled.

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Interactive universe
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