Webb Captures New Image of Sombrero Galaxy

[localroger]

9. Messier 104 is very definitely visible to the naked eye...

...in a very dark sky. However, you will not be able to resolve it as the "sombrero galaxy" as you see in all the astronomy textbooks. Nobody saw an image like that until photographic film time exposures became the norm in the early 20th century. What you will see is a bit of smudgy faint light, more diffuse than a star, which is always in the same place in the sky with respect to the stars. And that is exactly what early astronomers like Messier and Mechain saw.