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.

Date taken: May 2, 2005
Location: Texas Star Party, Ft. Davis, Texas
Telescope: Celestron 8" SCT f/6.3 (focal reducer) FL 1260mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10 Temma 2
Guiding: SBIG ST-237a thru a Celestron ST-80 f/5 FL 400mm
Camera: Unmodified Canon 300D DSLR at prime focus
Camera Control and Focusing: ImagesPlus (IP)
Exposures: 7 at 4 minutes each; 4 at 5 minutes each
Total Exposure time: 48 minutes @ ISO 800; All in Raw mode
Converted Raws into 16 bit Tiff and calibrated with Dark frames in IP
Translated, rotated, aligned and Average Combined the groups of exposures individually
before translating, rotating, aligning and Average Combining the two stacks. All done in IP
Processing:
Digital Development, Curves, Levels and Background Compensation (using Line Profile) in IP
Resized for Web in IP
Final touches using Russell Croman's Gradient plug-in for Photoshop
Conditions:
Mag 7+ skies; 8/10 transparency(with occasional high thin clouds); 6/10 seeing
Ambient temp: ~55*F falling to ~45*F
Stopped imaging when the moon came up around 4:15 AM