This galaxy is a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way and gets its nickname due to the bright middle bulge resembling the crown of a sombrero. At 130,000 light years in width, it is slightly larger than the Milky Way. It is also known as M104 in the Messier catalog. We see it edge on, so we are not able to see the spiral arms. It is about 50 million light years away from us and can be found in the constellation Virgo.
As a comparison, the Andromeda Galaxy (that can be viewed in this same gallery) is only 2.2 million light years distant.

Dates taken:
May 19, 20 and 21, 2009
Location:
Ft. Griffin State Historic Site, Texas
Telescope:
Astro-Tech 6" Ritchey-Chretien at f/9 1370mm focal length
Mount:
Takahashi EM-11 Temma 2, guided by an SBIG ST-237 thru an E-finder at 100mm focal length
Camera:
Canon XSi, at prime focus; modified by Hap Griffin with the Baader filter
Camera Control and Focusing:
ImagesPlus 3.60 (IP)
Exposures:
32 at 5 minutes each; 10 at 8 minutes each; all at ISO 800 in Raw mode
Total Exposure time:
4 hours
Processing:
Converted, calibrated, de-bayered, normalized, aligned and MinMax combined
using Automatic Image Set Processing in IP.
Final processing in Photoshop CS2

If a small image appears, click on "Original" below to see a larger version.