M87 (Virgo A)

Type:

(also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486) supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo that contains several trillion stars. The prominent relativistic plasma jet is visible in the bottom inset (own data).

Top inset: matched overlay of the corresponding Hubble image (30% ratio) and own image to demonstrate details of the jet. The source of the jet is a supermassive black hole, that was imaged using data collected in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), with a final, processed image released on 10 April 2019.

Visual Brightness: 8.6 mag / Distance ~ 53 MLy

Date: May 10-th & 11-th, 2024 / Moon ~ 15% (+)

Equipment: Stellina 80/400, 823x10s (2h 17min), darks, stacked: APP, post-proc.: TOPAZ denoise, FITSwork, Affinity Photo

The following picture shows the details and the source of the relativistic jet by observations at different radio wavelengths using several interferometric facilities, zooming into the supermassive black hole imaged by the EHT collaboration. The spatial resolution spans over six orders of magnitude!

Full article and picture published in C. Goddi et al. 2019, The Messenger, 177, 25

At the black hole (bottom inset), gravity is so strong that light is severely bent, creating a bright (almost circular) ring. The north–south asymmetry in the emission ring is produced by relativistic beaming and Doppler boosting (matter in the bottom part of the image is moving toward the observer) and is mediated by the black hole spin (which is pointing away from Earth and rotating clockwise)