M87 – Astronomy Now

Meet monstrous Messier 87

17 April 2023 Mark Armstrong

Lurking close to the centre of the massive agglomeration of galaxies which straddle the boundary between Virgo and Coma Berenices lies a circular, ninth-magnitude spot of light seen through binoculars and a small telescope on the Virgo side of the border.

A sharper image of the massive black hole lurking at the heart of M87

13 April 2023 Astronomy Now

Using machine learning, researchers have sharpened the Event Horizon Telescope’s iconic view of the black hole lurking at the heart of galaxy M87

Polarised light shows magnetic field around M87’s black hole

24 March 2021 Astronomy Now

The Event Horizon Telescope collaborations provides a fresh look, in polarised light, at M87’s supermassive black hole.

Black hole’s shadow is wobbling, providing insights into dynamics of accretion disc

23 September 2020 Astronomy Now

The famously imaged shadow of the supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 is wobbling, opening a new window on the dynamics of its accretion disc.

Black hole telescope team shares $3 million Breakthrough Prize

9 September 2019 Astronomy Now

Researchers with the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration will share a $3 million Breakthrough Prize for their historic image of the supermassive black hole at the core of the M87 galaxy.

Spitzer Space Telescope puts M87’s black hole in context

8 May 2019 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope puts iconic black hole image in context, showing what amounts to a wide-angle view capturing jets spewing away from M87.

‘Virtual’ telescope captures first direct image of black hole

10 April 2019 Astronomy Now

For the first time, astronomers have captured a direct view of the environment just outside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.

How black hole jets break out of their galaxies

18 June 2016 Astronomy Now

A computer simulation of the powerful jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centres of the largest galaxies explains why some burst forth as bright beacons visible across the universe, while others fall apart and never pierce the halo of the galaxy. A jet’s hot ionised gas is propelled by the twisting magnetic fields of the central rotating black hole.

Discovery measures “heartbeats” of a distant galaxy’s stars

16 November 2015 Astronomy Now

In many ways stars are like living beings. They’re born; they live; they die. And they even have a heartbeat. Near the end of their lifetime they begin to pulsate, increasing and decreasing their brightness by a large amount every few hundred days. Using a novel technique, astronomers have detected thousands of stellar “pulses” in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Their measurements offer a new way of determining a galaxy’s age.

Messier 87 has swallowed an entire galaxy in the last billion years

26 June 2015 Astronomy Now

M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy with a total mass more than a million million times that of the Sun that lies at the centre of the Virgo Cluster about 50 million light-years away. New observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope have revealed the full extent of the galaxy’s cannibalistic nature.