Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Astronomy enthusiasts have a golden opportunity to see what National Geographic refers to as a “stunning galaxy” on Friday night, as Messier 104 – better known as the Sombrero Galaxy – will be visible in the southern part of the sky, according to the website.
Messier 104 is “is a dramatic-looking telescope object with a distinctive dark dust lane that cuts right across its bright core, giving it a strong resemblance to its namesake,” they added. It is one of the brightest and most famous galaxies that can be seen using household telescopes.
Stargazers can track down the galaxy by mentally drawing a line from the moon to Gienah, a bright star that is located 165 light-years away in the constellation Corvus, Nat Geo said. Then, using either a good set of binoculars or a small backyard telescope, scan to the midpoint of this line in search of “a faint, fuzzy oval patch.” That object will be Messier 104.
Taking a closer look at Messier 104
The Sombrero Galaxy, which according to NASA is +8 in magnitude, is located about 28 million light-years from Earth at the southern edge of the constellation Virgo. It has a mass equivalent to 800 billion suns, making it one of the most massive objects in the cluster. It is 50,000 light-years across and is located some 28 million light-years from Earth.
“The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane,” the US space agency said. “[It] is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes.”
Messier 104 is nicknamed the Sombrero Galaxy because of its resemblance to the well-known Mexican hat, famed for its broad rim and high top. It has a “rich system of globular clusters” that number nearly 2,000, or 10 times as many as those in orbit around the Milky Way, and their ages range from between 10 billion and 13 billion years old.
Embedded in its bright core is a smaller disk that is tilted in relation to the larger one, and X-ray emissions appear to indicate that there is material falling to its core, which contains a one-billion solar-mass black hole. Once believed to be a disk of luminous gas around a young star, the object was later found to be a galaxy traveling at speeds of up to 700 miles per second, said NASA.
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