Webb Captures New Image of Sombrero Galaxy | Sci.News

The sharp resolution of Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) brings into focus details of the Sombrero galaxy’s outer ring, providing insights into how the dust is distributed.

The Sombrero galaxy is located approximately 28 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo.

Also known as Messier 104, M104 or NGC 4594, this spiral galaxy was discovered on May 11, 1781 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain.

It has a diameter of approximately 49,000 light-years — about 3 times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.

The Sombrero galaxy has a very massive central bulge and hosts a supermassive black hole.

We see the galaxy edge-on, at an angle of 6 degrees south of its plane. Its dark dust lane dominates the view.

“The clumpy nature of the dust, where MIRI detects carbon-containing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, can indicate the presence of young star-forming regions,” Webb astronomers said in a statement.

“However, unlike some galaxies studied with Webb, including Messier 82, where 10 times as many stars are born as in the Milky Way, the Sombrero galaxy is not a particular hotbed 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.”

“The supermassive black hole at the center of the Sombrero galaxy, also known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), is rather docile, even at a hefty 9-billion-solar masses,” they noted.

“It’s classified as a low luminosity AGN, slowly snacking on infalling material from the galaxy, while sending off a bright, relatively small, jet.”

“Also within the Sombrero galaxy dwell some 2,000 globular clusters, a collection of hundreds of thousands of old stars held together by gravity,” the researchers said.

“This type of system serves as a pseudo laboratory for astronomers to study stars — thousands of stars within one system with the same age, but varying masses and other properties is an intriguing opportunity for comparison studies.”

“In the MIRI image, galaxies of varying shapes and colors litter the background of space.”

“The different colors of these background galaxies can tell astronomers about their properties, including how far away they are.”