Over the years, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken some of the most fascinating images in space. It had been in use since the 1990s. Astronomers have been able to study galaxies of various shapes and sizes from practically every angle since then. The ‘Sombrero Galaxy,’ is around 40 million light-years away from Earth. It was one such breathtaking image acquired by one of the immense observatories and shared by NASA.
The Sombrero is also famous as ‘Little Sombrero,’ ‘NGC 7814,’ or ‘Caldwell 43,’. It is a bright central bulge with a narrow disk filled with dust and a dazzling halo of gas and stars set against a backdrop of distant galaxies.
NASA noted in a blog post that the ‘Sombrero’ galaxy, which is billions of years old, had a bright core bulge and a halo of blazing gas stretching out into space just a few years ago.
The ‘Sombrero’ Galaxy’s dusty spiral arms consisted of dusty material that absorbs light from the galactic center.
Sombrero is the name of the galaxy because it resembles a Mexican hat. It is located on the southern edge of the Virgo galaxy cluster.
Some astronomers thought the galaxy was merely an edge-on disk of brilliant gas surrounding a young star, similar to how our solar system formed in the 19th century.
However, astronomer V M Slipher found in 1912 that the hat-like object was speeding away from us at 700 miles per second.
This incredible speed provided some of the first evidence that the Sombrero was a separate galaxy. Also, the universe was expanding in all directions.