Messier 87: Virgo A

M87 is the brightest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster and one of the most studied galaxies anywhere. In a telescope it is a plain round glow, but it is the galaxy whose central black hole became the first ever photographed.

What it is

M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy near the center of the Virgo Cluster, about 54 million light-years away. Its bright inner part spans roughly 110,000 light-years, and its faint halo reaches much farther. It is one of the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe and is surrounded by thousands of globular clusters, far more than the roughly 150 that orbit our Milky Way.

At its center is a supermassive black hole of about 6.5 billion solar masses. It drives a jet of particles moving at nearly the speed of light that extends about 5,000 light-years from the core, and it makes M87 one of the strongest radio sources in the sky, known to radio astronomers as Virgo A. In April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope, a worldwide network of radio dishes working as one, released an image of the glowing ring of gas around this black hole and the dark shadow inside it.

Nearby cluster members include M84, M86, M89 and M90.

When to see it

From about 40°N, M87 is highest around midnight in early April and around 10 p.m. standard time (11 p.m. daylight time) in early May, reaching about 62° above the southern horizon. It is also well placed from most of the Southern Hemisphere, in the northern sky during autumn.

How to find it

Find M84 and M86 first: they lie at the midpoint of the line from Denebola, the star at Leo's tail, to Vindemiatrix (Epsilon Virginis), about 9° from each. M87 is about 1.5° southeast of M84. Another route starts at Rho Virginis, a 5th-magnitude star about 5° west-southwest of Vindemiatrix; M87 lies about 3.5° northwest of Rho.

What you will see

In 10×50 binoculars under a dark sky, M87 is a faint, tiny spot of light. A 70–100 mm telescope shows a round glow with a bright center that fades evenly outward, with no structure. A 200 mm or larger telescope shows a bigger, brighter halo and a sharp core, and several small galaxies nearby, but the famous jet is beyond the reach of most amateur instruments, and the black hole itself can only be seen by the combined radio network. From the suburbs the core still shows clearly. Filters do not help.

History

Charles Messier discovered M87 on March 18, 1781, one of eight Virgo-area objects he logged that night. In 1918 Heber Curtis noticed a straight ray of light coming out of its center, the first sighting of the jet. The black hole image of 2019, made from data taken in 2017, gave the first direct view of the edge of a black hole.