💾 Archived View for procyon.greentrawler.com › stars › 11-M87.gmi captured on 2024-09-29 at 01:43:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Messier 87 (M87) is a colossal elliptical galaxy located approximately 53.5 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster. Renowned for its impressive size, M87 spans about 120,000 light-years in diameter and is home to an estimated one trillion stars. Its smooth, featureless appearance is characteristic of elliptical galaxies, which lack the distinct spiral structure seen in many other galaxies. M87 is particularly notable for its rich population of globular clusters, with estimates suggesting it contains over 12,000 of these tightly bound star groups, far surpassing the number found in our own Milky Way.
One of the most groundbreaking aspects of M87 is its supermassive black hole, which has a mass of approximately 6.5 billion solar masses. In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration made history by capturing the first-ever image of this black hole's event horizon, revealing a bright ring of light surrounding a dark center—an iconic representation of the black hole's shadow. Additionally, M87 is known for its powerful jet of relativistic plasma that extends thousands of light-years from its core, a phenomenon believed to be driven by the energy released from the supermassive black hole.