Messier 87

Messier 87 is a giant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. Its active central black hole powers a prominent relativistic jet and was the first black hole imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Supermassive black hole: A black hole with a mass of millions to billions of Suns, commonly found at a galaxy’s center. M87’s central black hole has a mass of about 6.5 billion Suns.
Event Horizon Telescope: A global radio telescope array that combines observations using very long baseline interferometry. Its 2019 image of M87’s black hole revealed a bright ring around a central shadow.
Charles Messier: An eighteenth-century French astronomer who compiled a catalog of nebulae and star clusters. Messier included M87 as object 87 in his catalog in 1781.
Black hole shadow: A dark region in an image caused by a black hole’s capture of light against surrounding emission. The shadow measured around M87* provided a direct view of its extreme gravitational environment.
Relativistic jet: A narrow outflow of charged particles moving at speeds close to the speed of light. M87’s jet extends thousands of light-years from its nucleus.
M87*: The supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87. M87* is the specific object imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Virgo Cluster: The nearest large cluster of galaxies to the Local Group, centered in the constellation Virgo. M87 is the cluster’s dominant galaxy and lies near its center.
Very long baseline interferometry: A radio astronomy technique that combines widely separated telescopes to achieve exceptionally high angular resolution. The Event Horizon Telescope used this method to resolve structures near M87*.
Accretion disk: A rotating structure of gas and dust spiraling around a massive central object. Infalling matter around M87’s black hole supplies energy to its active nucleus.
M87 jet: The relativistic jet launched from the active nucleus of Messier 87. Its structure and changing brightness provide direct evidence of energetic outflows.

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