The Sombrero galaxy ( NGC 4594 ) is an Sa galaxy with a symmetric dust ring .
We have used the Large APEX BOlometer CAmera ( LABOCA ) at 870 µm and the MAx-Planck Millimeter BOlometer ( MAMBO-2 ) at 1.2 mm to detect the dust ring for the first time at submillimetre and millimetre wavelengths .
We have constructed a model of the galaxy to separate the active galactic nucleus ( AGN ) and dust ring components .
The ring radius at both 870 µm and 1.2 mm agrees well with the radius determined from optical absorption and atomic gas studies .
The spectral energy distribution of the ring is well fitted by a single grey-body with dust emissivity index \beta = 2 and a dust temperature T _ { \mathrm { d } } =18.4 K. The dust mass of the ring is found to be 1.6 \pm 0.2 \times 10 ^ { 7 } M _ { \odot } which , for a Galactic gas-to-dust ratio , implies a gas mass that is consistent with measurements from the literature .