Caption
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero Galaxy with its MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), resolving the clumpy nature of the dust along the galaxy’s outer ring.
The mid-infrared light highlights the gas and dust that are part of star formation taking place within the Sombrero Galaxy’s outer disk. The rings of the Sombrero Galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars per year, in comparison to the Milky Way’s roughly two solar masses a year. It’s not a particular hotbed of star formation.
The Sombrero Galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
