The Sombrero Galaxy

[Ptrope]

Given the tenor of this board for the last couple months, this may be seen as a joke, but it's not - I just ran across this today, while looking at a collection of Hubble photos online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sombrero_Galaxy

It was first discovered in 1767, and appears to have a supermassive black hole (1 billion times the mass of Sol) at its center, among the most massive detected in any nearby galaxy.

Pretty cool!

 

[DontFeedPhil]

Umm someone needs to edit that wiki article to show one of our sombreros in place of that first image. That would be cool. But I suck at photoshop.

 

[TerriO]

That wouldn't be a suggestion to vandalize Wikipedia, would it?

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

I posted this link in the sombrero thread! I don't know how you could have missed it, what with only a bajillion posts in that thread.

 

[Gepard]

Not only that, but I seem to recall someone Photoshoppping a sombrero onto the Sombrero Galaxy at one point or another....

 

[M'Sharak]

Also remembering the Galaxy putting in an appearance in the image seen here (from almost exactly four weeks ago.)

Yes, there be nerds afoot.

Edit:

APOD has also got some very nifty images, such as this multiple-color set. Links to more details and images of M104 may be found here.