M87 - Supergiant Elliptical Galaxy in Virgo with Relativistic Plasma Jet

Messier 87 (NGC 4486), also known as Virgo A, Virgo X-1, or the Smoking Gun Galaxy, is a supergiant elliptical galaxy located at the dynamical center of the Virgo Cluster, at a distance of roughly 53–55 million light-years. Classified as an E0–E1 galaxy, M87 is one of the most massive galaxies in the local universe and is best known for hosting a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 6.5 billion solar masses. This black hole was the first ever to be directly imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope, cementing M87’s role as a cornerstone object in modern astrophysics.

Perhaps M87’s most striking feature is its relativistic plasma jet, which emerges from the galaxy’s core and extends thousands of light-years into intergalactic space. First discovered in optical light in 1918, the jet is powered by matter accreting onto the central black hole and accelerated to near-light speeds along powerful magnetic field lines. In deep optical imaging, the jet appears as a thin, luminous streak projecting from the otherwise smooth and symmetrical stellar halo, providing rare visible-light evidence of extreme relativistic processes at work far beyond the Milky Way.

Messier 87 is also catalogued as Arp 152 in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, where it is highlighted specifically because of its prominent relativistic jet emerging from the galaxy’s nucleus.

This image is based on 7 hours of LRGB integration acquired with Telescope Live’s CHI-1-CCD system.