Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2025

40 ASTRO PUBLISHING entirely new perspective on this strik- ing galaxy. Located around 30 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, the Sombrero Galaxy is in- stantly recognisable. Viewed nearly edge on, the galaxy’s softly luminous bulge and sharply outlined disc re- semble the rounded crown and broad brim of the Mexican hat from which the galaxy gets its name. Though the Sombrero Galaxy is packed with stars, it’s surprisingly not a hotbed of star formation. Less than one solar mass of gas is converted into stars within the knotted, dusty disc of the galaxy each year. Even the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, which at 9 billion solar masses is more than 2000 times more mas- sive than the Milky Way’s central black hole, is fairly calm. The galaxy is too faint to be spotted with unaided vision, but it is readily viewable with a modest amateur tel- escope. Seen from Earth, the galaxy spans a distance equivalent to rough- ly one third of the diameter of the full Moon. The galaxy’s size on the sky is too large to fit within Hubble’s narrow field of view, so this image is actually a mosaic of several images stitched together. One of the things that makes this galaxy especially notable is its view- ing angle, which is inclined just six degrees off of the galaxy’s equator. JULY-AUGUST 2025 A s part of ESA/Hubble’s 35 th As part of the 35th anniversary celebrations of the Hubble Space Telescope, a new series of im- ages has been shared that revisit pre- viously released Hubble targets. Here, we revisit the iconic Sombrero Galaxy using new image processing techniques. The new image reveals finer detail in the galaxy’s disc, as well as more background stars and galaxies. Several Hubble images of the Sombrero Galaxy have been re- leased over the past two decades, in- cluding this well-known Hubble image from October 2003. In Novem- ber 2024, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope also gave an Hubble provides a new view of the Sombrero Galaxy by NASA/ESA Bethany Downer