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Supermassive black hole
M87*
The supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87 — the subject of the first-ever direct image of a black hole, released in April 2019.
Estimated mass~6.5 billion solar masses
Distance from Earth~55 million light-years
Event horizon diameter~38 billion km (event horizon)
ConstellationVirgo
DiscoveryImaged 2019 (first black hole ever directly photographed)
Host galaxyMessier 87 (M87), a giant elliptical galaxy
About M87*
M87* made history as the first black hole ever directly imaged, in a landmark 2019 result from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration. The image showed a glowing, asymmetric ring of light bent around the black hole's shadow, exactly matching predictions from Einstein's general relativity made over a century earlier. M87* also powers one of the most famous relativistic jets in astronomy — a beam of particles blasting out from near the black hole at close to the speed of light, visible across thousands of light-years.
Interesting facts
- M87*'s jet is roughly 5,000 light-years long — visible even in amateur telescope images of the M87 galaxy.
- M87* is one of the most massive black holes known with a directly measured mass, roughly 1,500 times more massive than Sagittarius A*.
- The 2019 image took roughly two years of data processing by four separate teams working independently, to confirm the result before publication.