Sombrero Galaxy in Multiple Wavelengths

  • Released Monday, October 29, 2018
  • ID: 30995

The Sombrero Galaxy has a distinctive ring of dust that circles a smooth bulge of stars. The galaxy's dust and inner flat disk are very clear in the infrared. The Sombrero Galaxy may be a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, but because of its extremely edge-on orientation, we see it in the flat pancake aspect. Our Milky Way would also have this appearance if viewed from the side angle.

Optical: The dust ring is partially hidden in the galaxy's visible-light glow.
Infrared: The galaxy's dust and inner flat disk are clear when viewing infrared.
Hubble optical image of Sombrero Galaxy The dust ring is partially hidden in the galaxy's visible-light glow.

Hubble optical image of Sombrero Galaxy

The dust ring is partially hidden in the galaxy's visible-light glow.

Spitzer Near-Infrared image of Sombrero Galaxy The galaxy's dust and inner flat disk are clear when viewing infrared.

Spitzer Near-Infrared image of Sombrero Galaxy

The galaxy's dust and inner flat disk are clear when viewing infrared.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credits:

  • Optical: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI)
  • Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Kennicutt (University of Arizona) and the SINGS Team.


Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

Spitzer Space Telescope
NASA JPL/Cal Tech
Hubble Space Telescope
Observed Data

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.



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