Dustbands in the Sombrero Galaxy

It is possible to follow the spiral structure of the Sombrero Galaxy almost all the way round. The dark areas around the stars and galaxies in the field are artefacts of the image processing. This galaxy is notable for its dominant nuclear bulge, composed primarily of mature stars, and its nearly edge-on disk composed of stars, gas, and intricately structured dust. The complexity of this dust, and the high resolution of this image, is most apparent directly in front of the bright nucleus, but is also very evident as dark absorbing lanes throughout the disk. A significant fraction of the galaxy disk is even visible on the far side of the source, despite its massive bulge.

Technical information : The image has been processed to show the numerous dust bands in the central plane. It was made by dividing the V-band image by itself smoothed with a 2D gaussian profile (sigma: 10 pix); this removes the uniform areas and enhances the high spatial frequency features, e.g. the dust bands. Image processing by Mark Neeser (Kapteyn Institute, Groningen) and Richard Hook (ST/ECF, Garching, Germany).