sharp resolution Web’s mid-infrared device (MIRI) focuses on details of the outer ring of the Sombrero Galaxy, providing insight into how dust is distributed.
The Sombrero Galaxy is located approximately 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
This spiral galaxy, also known as Messier 104, M104, or NGC 4594, was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain on May 11, 1781.
It is about 49,000 light-years in diameter, about one-third the size of our Milky Way galaxy.
The Sombrero galaxy has a very large central bulge and a supermassive black hole.
We are looking directly at the galaxy, at an angle of 6 degrees south of its face. Its dark dusty path dominates the view.
“The clumpy nature of the dust, in which MIRI detects carbon-containing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, may indicate the presence of young star-forming regions,” Webb astronomers said in a statement.
“But unlike some of the galaxies studied with Webb, such as Messier 82, which has 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way, the Sombrero galaxy is not a special hotbed of star formation.”
“The Sombrero ring produces less than 1 solar mass per year of stars, compared to about 2 solar masses per year for the Milky Way.”
“The supermassive black hole at the center of the Sombrero galaxy, also known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), is fairly docile, even at a massive 9 billion solar masses,” the researchers noted.
“Classified as a low-luminosity AGN, it slowly chews up material falling from the galaxy while emitting bright and relatively small jets.”
“Also, there are about 2,000 globular clusters within the Sombrero galaxy, which are collections of hundreds of thousands of old stars held together by gravity,” the researchers said.
“This type of system acts as a pseudo-laboratory for astronomers to study stars. There are thousands of stars in one system of the same age but with different masses and other properties, making it difficult to compare It’s an interesting opportunity for research.”
“In the MIRI images, galaxies of different shapes and colors are scattered across the cosmic background.”
“The different colors of these background galaxies can tell astronomers about their properties, such as their distance.”
Source: www.sci.news
