Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  M 87  ·  NGC 4478  ·  NGC 4486  ·  Virgo Galaxy
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The Central Jet of Messier 87, Rolf Olsen
The Central Jet of Messier 87
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The Central Jet of Messier 87, Rolf Olsen
The Central Jet of Messier 87
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Description

This deep image shows the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, surrounded by over 1,300 of its globular clusters and with the famous central jet; a powerful stream of material that is ejected from the galaxy's supermassive black hole.
The image is a crop of the full image, with inserts from Hubble Space Telescope and the EHT Collaboration.

The central jet of M87 is one of the most spectacular astrophysical phenomena in the universe. It extends more than 5,000 light-years from the galaxy's core and emits intense radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. The jet is powered by the accretion of matter onto the supermassive black hole, which has a mass of approximately 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first-ever image of the shadow of a black hole. The target was the supermassive black hole at the center of M87. By comparing the observed size of the black hole's shadow to models of black hole accretion and spacetime geometry, astronomers have been able to estimate the mass of the black hole to be around 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. This makes it one of the most massive black holes known.

Messier 87 is a giant elliptical galaxy located in the Virgo galaxy cluster, approximately 55 million light-years away from Earth. It is a massive elliptical galaxy, with a diameter of around 120,000 light-years and a mass estimated to be around 2 trillion times that of the Sun. It is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe, and is located at the center of the Virgo galaxy cluster, which contains over 1,000 galaxies.

Image details:
Date: 17 nights, March - May 2022
Exposure: LRGB: 1216:220:225:250 mins, total 31 hours 51 mins @ -25C
Telescope: Homebuilt 12.5" f/4 Serrurier Truss Newtonian
Camera: QSI 683wsg with Lodestar guider
Filters: Astrodon LRGB E-Series Gen 2
Taken from my observatory in Auckland, New Zealand

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The Central Jet of Messier 87, Rolf Olsen