The Milky Way is kind of nice-looking, but for sheer aesthetic appeal, you can’t beat the Sombrero Galaxy. NASA just put up some new pictures of it taken using the Hubble telescope:

The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy.

Now that is a stylin’ piece of cosmos. You can go here for a full-screen view, or if you really want to zoom in and see close detail, view an enormous 7.12-meg JPEG file. It’s about four feet tall and eight feet wide, but you can move it around onscreen to look at the amazing tendrils of stars.