M104: 草帽星系

2022年4月23日

Messier 104
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive;
Processing & Copyright: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

Explanation: A gorgeous spiral galaxy, Messier 104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, the Sombrero Galaxy. This sharp view of the well-known galaxy was made from over 10 hours of Hubble Space Telescope image data, processed to bring out faint details often lost in the overwhelming glare of M104’s bright central bulge. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum, and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Still, the spiky foreground stars in this field of view lie well within our own Milky Way.

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M104: 草帽星系
影像提供: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive;
影像处理与版权: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

说明: 壮丽的螺旋星系M104，是以它接近侧向的宽广圈状黝黑尘埃带著称。在鼓胀星系核心的明亮恒星之衬托下，这道宇宙尘埃带让星系看似戴着宽边帽，因而让星系博得草帽星系的昵称。上面这幅此著名星系的清晰照片，结合了超过10小时的哈伯太空望远镜影像数据，以呈现通常淹没在M104明亮鼓核炫光中的暗淡细微结构。亦名为NGC 4594的草帽星系，在所有电磁波段都得见，因此咸认它的核心藏有超大质量黑洞。M104离我们约2千8百万光年远，大小则在50,000光年左右，是室女座星系团南缘最大的成员星系之一。而在这片视野里的带芒天体，则是近在我们银河系之内的前景恒星。

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