Scientists detect halo and stellar stream around the Sombrero Galaxy
Updated
Updated · Livescience.com · May 3
Scientists detect halo and stellar stream around the Sombrero Galaxy
5 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · May 3
The new Dark Energy Camera image shows the galaxy, 30 million light-years away in Virgo and Corvus, with a diffuse halo extending more than three times its bright disk.
It also reveals a thin curved stream of stars, suggesting a past interaction with a smaller satellite galaxy, while capturing the bright nucleus, dust lane and about 2,000 globular clusters in unusual clarity.
The 570-megapixel instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile, operated by NSF NOIRLab, detected structures usually too faint to see, building on James Webb observations released in 2024 and 2025.
What cosmic secrets lie hidden in old data, awaiting new AI to finally reveal them?
How will the Sombrero Galaxy's newly found 'ghost' halo challenge our core theories about dark matter?
The Sombrero Galaxy is three times bigger than we knew. Is our own Milky Way also hiding its true size?