✺ Sombrero Galaxy

  Sombrero Galaxy is a galaxy in Virgo.

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  Type            Galaxy
  Constellation   Virgo
  Magnitude       9.5
  Apparent size   9′ × 4′
  You need        a small telescope

  Known as
  Messier         M104
  Dreyer          NGC 4594

  Physical
  Distance        31 million light years
  Stars           about 2,000 globular clusters orbit it

  More information about Sombrero Galaxy

  The Sombrero Galaxy is a spiral seen from the side, tilted only six
  degrees off edge-on, so it looks like a bright line with a bulge (the
  galaxy core) in the middle rather than a spiral. A band of dust runs
  along the line and cuts across the bulge as a dark stripe, which gives
  it its name: it makes it look like a hat with a flat brim and rounded
  crown. Around it are nearly 2,000 globular clusters, dense balls of very
  old stars, against about 150 for our own galaxy. At the centre is a
  black hole around a billion times the mass of the Sun.

  History
  Discovered   1781, Pierre Mechain

  Messier was hunting comets. He compiled his list between 1758 and 1781
  as a register of things that look like comets but are not. That's why
  the objects on it have nothing in common beyond being fuzzy and staying
  put.

  Dreyer compiled the New General Catalogue in 1888, mostly from the
  sweeps William and John Herschel made of the sky, and numbered its 7,840
  objects in order of right ascension.

  where it is tonight:  skymap.sh/Sombrero Galaxy