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More Images of M87
1
Chandra X-ray Image of M87
In X-rays, M87 reveals evidence for a series of outbursts from the central supermassive black hole. The loops and bubbles in the hot, X-ray emitting gas are relics of small outbursts from close to the black hole. Other interesting features in M87 are narrow filaments of X-ray emission, which may be due to hot gas trapped by magnetic fields. One of these filaments is over 100,000 light years long, and extends below and to the right of the center of M87 in almost a straight line.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/W. Forman et al.)
2
Hubble Optical Image of M87
The monstrous elliptical galaxy M87 is the home of several trillion stars, a supermassive black hole,and family of 13,000 globular star clusters. M87 is the dominant galaxy at the center of the neighboring Virgo Cluster of galaxies, which contains some 2,000 galaxies. Amid the smooth yellow population of older stars, the two features that stand out most in this Hubble Space Telescope image of M87 are its soft blue jet and the myriad of starlike globular clusters scattered throughout the image. The jet is a black-hole-powered stream of material that is being ejected from the core of the galaxy. As gaseous material from the center of the galaxy accretes onto the black hole, the resultant energy released produces a fire-hose stream of subatomic particles that are accelerated to velocities near the speed of light.
More at Hubble
(Credit: NASA/STScI)
3
Ground-based Optical Image of M87
This image of M87 was taken with a ground-based 12.5" Carbon Truss Ritchey-Chretien (RC) telescope in red, green, and blue filters and a 20" RC telescope unfiltered. The observation was made at Nighthawk Observatory at New Mexico Skies. Total exposure time was 13 hours.
(Credit: R. Gendler (Copyright Robert Gendler 2006))
4
VLA Radio Image of M87
The radio data of M87 were obtained by W. Cotton and also archive processing using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array (NRAO/VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico.
(Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/W. Cotton)
5
M87 with Scale Bar



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