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The wide-brimmed Sombrero galaxy is revealed in all its splendor by a telescope in Chile

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Sombrero galaxy and its glowing halo of stars have never looked this good.

The U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab released the latest photo of the popular hat-shaped galaxy on Friday. A telescope in Chile observed it four years ago, but the color imaging was not completed until this week.

Located approximately 30 million light-years away, this spiral galaxy — formally known as Messier 104 — is one of the largest in the constellation Virgo cluster. It’s an estimated 50,000 light-years across. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.

Captured in incredible detail, the galaxy’s stellar halo appears to be triple the size of the sombrero itself.

A dark energy camera on the telescope also caught a stream of stars pouring out of the galaxy’s southern edge. Scientists believe the stars in this stream, as well as the halo, were ripped from other galaxies in a long-ago collision.

Astronomers discovered the galaxy back in the 1700s.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Inside Obama’s presidential museum opening this month: The cost, the books and a beehive

CHICAGO (AP) — The Obama Presidential Center will open June 19 more than a decade after the former president chose his hometown of Chicago for the project. The museum displays campaign memorabilia and presidential artifacts, while its campus showcases a new community basketball court, public library and playground. A look at the numbers behind the former President Barack Obama's presidential museum. $850 million The approximate cost to build the 225-foot museum tower and nearly 20-acre campus, which the Obama Foundation is paying for with private donations. The cost ballooned from the initial estimates of $350 million.
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