This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero Galaxy because of its appearance.
We view it from just 6 degrees south of its
equatorial plane, which is outlined by a rather thick dark rim of obscuring
dust.
The Sombrero Galaxy has an unusually
pronounced bulge with an extended and richly populated globular cluster system -
several hundred can be counted in long exposures from big telescopes.
The galaxy was the first one found, by Vesto M. Slipher
in 1912, to be moving away from us so at such high speed (about 1000 km/s)that
it could not be an
object in our own Galaxy. This formed the basis of the theory that our Universe
is expanding.