M104 - This is one of my favorite objects in the
sky to observe. It is a spiral galaxy called M104. Its nickname is the Sombrero Galaxy. Can you see why?
Click on the image to enlarge it.
IT WASN'T until this century that humans truly understood the essence of the galaxy that surrounds us. It's called the Milky Way Galaxy. Our star, the Sun, is but one of billions that make up this giant swirling structure. All of the stars that you see with your unaided eyes on any given night belong to the Milky Way. The galaxy spins on its own axis very slowly. In fact, the last time we were where we are now was about 250 million years ago. Through an amateur astronomer's telescope, most galaxies look like dim little smudges of light against a black background. Even the view through a large telescope doesn't show the galaxies as they often appear in photographs.
The Hubble Space Telescope can take spectacular photographs and collect valuable data about even the most distant galaxies, forcing astronomers to alter their ideas and theories of galaxy formation. And then there's this little matter of the quasars. What are they? Are they the result of massive black holes at the center of galaxies? Or do they exist because of some other mysterious, unknown process? Follow some of the links below to a better understanding of galaxies and quasars.
Galaxy Birth
Notes from Lectures 17-21: Galaxies.
Classifying Galaxies - An Interactive Lesson on the Hubble System of Classifying Galaxies.
The Hubble Deep Field.
Galaxies in the Young Universe.
The Heart of the Milky Way.
Messier Galaxy images.
Photos of Interacting Galaxies.
Galaxy Collisions.
Movies of Colliding Galaxies.
Cosmic Voyage.