Sombrero Galaxy Appears Distinct In New Image From Webb Telescope

A new picture of the Sombrero galaxy, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, revealed a perspective that appears different from the broad-brimmed Mexican hat after which it was named. The image, taken through the space observatory's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, features the Sombrero galaxy's smooth inner disk instead of the glowing core, which usually shines in visible light, as seen in images taken through the Hubble Space Telescope, CNN reported.

Webb Space Telescope's view makes the galaxy's “crown” invisible, changing its appearance to resemble a bull's-eye. In the background of the image, several distant galaxies can be seen.

The Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104 or M104, is situated about 30 million light-years from the Earth in the Virgo constellation. It was discovered in 1781 by French astronomer Pierre Méchain.

The latest image highlights intricate details in Sombrero's outer ring, revealing how dust, a fundamental building block of astronomical objects, is distributed throughout the galaxy. 

Earlier, observations from the retired Spitzer Space Telescope of NASA showed this outer ring as smooth and uniform. Webb's advanced imaging, on the contrary, shows a clumpy, textured structure for the first time.

The researchers have also spotted carbon-containing molecules, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in the dust ring. This suggests its outer ring could be home to star-forming regions. However, it must be noted that this galaxy is quiet in terms of star formation compared to others, like Messier 82.

Sombrero galaxy's rings produce less than one solar mass of stars in a year compared to the Milky Way's roughly two solar masses, SciTechDaily reported.

The supermassive black hole at its centre is less active than the ones present in other galaxies. Still, the Sombrero galaxy is full of 2,000 globular clusters or groups of hundreds of thousands of old stars gravitationally held together.