Object Type: Spiral galaxy (Sa)
Constellation: Virgo
Magnitude: 8.0
Size: 9' x 4'

M104's central bulge and prominent dust lane give rise to its nickname, the Sombrero Galaxy. It is located about 50 million light-years from our solar system.

Equipment: Meade 14" LX200R/ST-10XME/Astro-Physics CCDT67 telecompressor/Astrodon LRGB filters/Paramount ME
F-ratio: f/6.5
Exposures: LRGB:  L 12 x 5 minutes, binned 2x2: R 12 x 5 minutes: G 12 x 5 minutes: B 12 x 5 minutes: RGB binned 3x3
Date: April 26, 2008
Location: Landers, California, USA
Technical Notes: Individual exposures were obtained using CCDAutoPilot2 and then sigma combined. The RGB image was created in Registar 1.0. A high-pass filter of 2 pixels was applied twice and a high-pass filter of 4 pixels was applied once to the dust lanes in the image. Gaussian Blur of 1 pixel was applied to the RGB image.