Thursday, Jul 31, 2025

The galaxy M 104 was discovered by Pierre Méchain on 11 May 1781. It was not originally included in Messier's catalog. In his personal copy of the «Connoissance des Temps» published in 1784, Messier added the discovery of Méchain and described it as «a very faint nebula». It was not until 1921 that Camille Flammarion discovered Messier's notes, identified them as NGC 4594 and added it to the Messier catalog as M 104.Physical Properties M 104 was nicknamed the «Sombrero Galaxy» because of the distinctive dust ring in which new stars emerge. We see the galaxy at an angle of about 6 degrees. The galaxy is of the SA(s)a type and has an active core of the LINER type, in which a supermassive black hole of one billion solar masses is suspected. The high number of globular clusters is also remarkable. Around 2000 of these are estimated to belong to the galaxy. Their age is estimated to be 10 to 13 billion years. Heliocentric speeds measured in the last 20 years are in the range from 1087 km/s to 1095 km/s and distances determined with different methods range from 8.9 Mpc to 21 Mpc.