Messier 104 (NGC 4594) Sombrero galaxy
The sombrero galaxy, Messier 104, in the constellation Virgo has a brilliant white central core that is encircled by dust lane. The sombrero galaxy is estimated to be 28 million light years away and 50,000 light years across. Below image taken with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellcam2. Stellcam2 set at gain 9/14, gamma off, and integration 256. Image was dark subtracted, flat fielded, and aligned and stacked from 149, 8.5 second exposures.
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November 26th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Why is it that the distance from earth to the Sombrero Galaxy is listed anywhere from 23 million lightyears to 40 million lightyears? Is it that they are not sure or is it that they are just making it up as they go? This is a fairly large discrepancy. With this large of error, maybe the Galaxy isnt 50000 light years across as quoted but is really only 30000 lightyears across. That would change the number of stars in the Galaxy from 800 billion down to approximately 500 billion. It all seems strange that the published numbers for this Galaxy can be so differnt but yet the publications tell it like it is absolute truth. Please can somebody enlighten me.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Hi Fred,
I’ve noticed the discrepency on data published about many objects. Better telescopes, techniques, etc have refined the distance estimates. Some of the discrepancy may be due to the source and date of the publication or maybe just typographic errors. As you note though, the discrepancies are huge and the error band must be quite large.
Failure to indicate the accuracy of information is widespread in media today, (though I suspect its always been a problem throughout history). This unfortunately leads many to the think that scientists know nearly everything about a particular subject whether it be astronomy, biology, climate, or whatever. Sadly, some of the scientists themselves seem to believe that as well.
I generally try to put in some “waffle” words, like “estimated to be”, “believed to be”, etc if I quote distances, number of stars, etc. However, that is no excuse to just blindly quote the statistic without understanding where it came from and some idea of how accurate it is.