The Sombrero Galaxy's star-forming days are nearly over — and the James Webb Space Telescope may know why

A wide, flat disc of blue gasses bright on the outside with a dimmer inner ring, and bright white center point stretches across vast space.

The James Webb Space Telescope's brand-new image of the Sombrero Galaxy casts this city of stars in a new light — mid-infrared light, to be precise — and reveals clumps of dust in a mottled outer ring.

The Sombrero galaxy is so named because, in visible light images, lying nearly edge-on to us, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a sombrero hat, with its wide rim and bulging center. In this new image taken by JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which can peer through clouds of gas and warm dust, those classic hallmarks of the Sombrero have vanished, replaced by a lumpy ring of dust around a gap that houses the bright core where a supermassive black hole lurks.