M87 On Different Scales And Wavelengths

M87 on different scales and wavelengths

VLA radio image of the galaxy M87 in 1999. We are looking at complex flows of matter 200,000 light years across (that’s twice the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way). Let’s get closer.

X-ray image by Chandra, 2019 - we are looking at very energetic emission here! The close-up is about 25,000 light years across. Let’s look more closely…

Composite (UV, optical, infrared) image from the Hubble Space Telescope (2000). You can see the plasma jet the central Supermassive Black Hole ejects. The width of the image is 5000 light years.

Are you ready to see what’s causing all this mess?

This image is a fraction of a light year across (edited by Randall Munroe of XKCD). The supermassive black hole weighs 6.5 billion times our Sun!