Sombrero Galaxy in Multiple Wavelengths

  • Released Monday, October 29, 2018
View full credits

The Sombrero Galaxy's dust and inner flat disk are very clear in the infrared.

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.

This animation is the same as above, played twice as fast.

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.

Hubble and Spitzer images combined of the Sombrero Galaxy

Hubble and Spitzer images combined of the Sombrero Galaxy

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.

This page was originally published on Monday, October 29, 2018.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 12:40 AM EST.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

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.