CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Sombrero galaxy and its glowing halo of stars have never looked this good.
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab released the latest photo of the popular hat-shaped galaxy on Friday. A telescope in Chile observed it four years ago, but the color imaging was not completed until this week.
Located approximately 30 million light-years away, this spiral galaxy — formally known as Messier 104 — is one of the largest in the constellation Virgo cluster. It’s an estimated 50,000 light-years across. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.
Captured in incredible detail, the galaxy's stellar halo appears to be triple the size of the sombrero itself.
A dark energy camera on the telescope also caught a stream of stars pouring out of the galaxy's southern edge. Scientists believe the stars in this stream, as well as the halo, were ripped from other galaxies in a long-ago collision.
Astronomers discovered the galaxy back in the 1700s.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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