The U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab released a new, more color-rich image of the Sombrero galaxy on Friday, highlighting the galaxy’s bright, hat-like shape and its surrounding glow of stars. The image targets Messier 104, a spiral galaxy estimated at about 50,000 light-years across and located roughly 30 million light-years from Earth.
NOIRLab said the data were collected during observations by a telescope in Chile about four years earlier, but the color imaging portion was not completed until this week. Astronomers and the public now have a version of the Sombrero galaxy that NOIRLab described as revealing the galaxy and its stellar halo “in all its splendor.”
In NOIRLab’s framing, the galaxy is visible as a large stellar system in the Virgo constellation region. The release also emphasizes that the Sombrero’s halo appears extended far beyond the galaxy’s main disk, described as appearing about triple the size of the sombrero itself.
The NOIRLab image highlights a darker, more structured view of the galaxy’s outskirts. A dark energy camera on the Chile telescope also captured a stream of stars pouring out of the galaxy’s southern edge, extending the scene beyond the central disk.
NOIRLab said scientists believe the star stream—and the halo stars—were drawn out of other galaxies during a long-ago collision. The release portrays the Sombrero galaxy not just as an isolated spiral, but as a system whose outer features bear the record of earlier galactic interactions.
Astronomers discovered the galaxy in the 1700s, and it has since become one of the more recognizable objects in the night sky by name and appearance. In releasing the updated photo, NOIRLab gave observers a new view of the galaxy’s structure using the completed color imaging.