Supergiant elliptical galaxy whose central black hole was the first ever directly imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019.
Core Principles & Analysis
Its central black hole M87*, about 6.5 billion solar masses, became the first ever imaged when the Event Horizon Telescope released its picture in 2019.
A relativistic plasma jet some 5,000 light-years long, first noted by Heber Curtis in 1918, shoots from its nucleus.
It is orbited by roughly 15,000 globular clusters, among the largest such systems known.