On my list as an interesting astro target. The jet, though optically small, is bright and easily recorded in as little as a five second exposure.
The elliptical galaxy M87 is the home of several trillion stars, a supermassive black hole and a family of roughly 15,000 globular star clusters. The monstrous M87 is the dominant member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies which contains some 2,000 galaxies. Discovered in 1781, this galaxy is located 54 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Its most striking features are the blue relativistic jet (beam of ionized matter accelerated close to the speed of light) near the center and the myriad of star-like globular clusters. The jet is a black-hole-powered stream of material that is being ejected from M87’s core. (
www.nasa.gov)
Taken over several nights: Apr 20, May 13-14, 2021.
Comments