The Sombrero Galaxy (Messier 104) offers a fine view for visual observers and imagers. This nearly edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 million light years away in the Virgo galaxy cluster shows a smoky lane of interstellar dust finely etched against a brilliant galactic disk and unusually bright halo. This new image from the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at CTIO in Chile shows an immense halo of stars around the galactic plane along with a loop of stars (lower right), all of which likely came from smaller galaxies gobbled by this big spiral. The galaxy contains some 2,000 globular clusters, nearly twenty times as many as our Milky Way. It’s a beautiful image to behold.
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