By Iain Todd
Published: Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 15:07 PM
Webb Telescope captures spectacular view of hat-shaped galaxy. But where is its glowing core?
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image of the famous Sombrero Galaxy, but the galactic hat seems to be missing its large glowing core.
The Sombrero Galaxy is 30 million lightyears from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
Known formally as Messier 104 (the 104th entry in the Messier Catalogue), it’s a well-known example of an edge-on galaxy.
Not all galaxies are positioned so favourably as to offer us clear views of their spiral shapes and bright centres.
While ‘face-on’ galaxies like the Whirlpool Galaxy or the Triangulum Galaxy tend to hog the limelight, edge-on galaxies like the Hamburger Galaxy or Sombrero Galaxy are just as special.
What Webb’s view of the Sombrero Galaxy shows
This brand new image of the Sombrero Galaxy was captured in the mid-infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope.
If you’re familiar with images of the galaxy, you may be wondering why it looks more like a bullseye target than a wide-brimmed hat.
That’s because the most famous image of the Sombrero Galaxy is a visible light view captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (see below), and visible light can’t penetrate the galaxy’s dusty centre.
As a result, Hubble images show an extended, bright galactic centre.
Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), however, can peer through this dust to reveal the bright central core in more precise detail.
The image also shows off the galaxy’s outer ring, giving astronomers insight into how cosmic dust is distributed throughout the Universe.
This dust is the material out of which stars are born.
Webb’s view of the Sombrero Galaxy reveals intricate dust clumps within the outer ring for the first time.
Astronomers say these clumps may indicate young stars forming within the disc.
That’s quite a feat for a galaxy not known for its star-forming prowess.
While our Milky Way produces stars equivalent to the mass of two times that of our Sun every year, the Sombrero Galaxy produces half as much.
Black hole core
The bright centre visible in the Webb view of the Sombrero Galaxy is produced by matter falling in towards a central supermassive black hole.
Yes, black holes do give off light, and they can be some of the brightest objects in the Universe.
This is because as matter falls inwards, it heats up, giving off intense radiation.
Star clusters and galaxies
Astronomers estimate there are around 2,000 tightly-packed, ancient star clusters known as globular clusters within the Sombrero.
These objects are made up of hundreds of thousands of ancient stars all held together by gravity.
And if you look closely in the background of Webb’s image of the Sombrero Galaxy, you’ll see multiple distant galaxies.
The differing colours of the galaxies are partly caused by how far away they are.
Light from distant objects in space is stretched by the expansion of the Universe as it travels towards our telescopes, shifting that light over into the red spectrum.
This is known as ‘redshift‘ and it’s why galaxies look redder, the further away they are.
Once again, Webb has shown that its beautiful images contain a wealth of information enabling astronomers to unlock the secrets of the Universe.