M87

Virgo A · Giant elliptical galaxy

NASA’s Hubble catalog places M87 about 54 million light-years away in Virgo. That rounded distance sets this map stop and its approximate light-travel time.

The moving dashes represent light travelling between galaxies. Their speed and the spacing of the galaxy icons are illustrative.

≈ 120,000 light-years across.

The 120,000-light-year reference follows NASA’s Hubble image description and describes the bright galaxy. Its diffuse outer envelope reaches farther; this is not the diameter of a spiral disk or a sharp physical boundary.

The overview compares this galaxy with a rounded Milky Way reference of 100,000 light-years on one linear scale. These luminous extents do not represent sharp physical edges.

Stellar envelope, nucleus and jet

M87 has a smooth stellar body rather than spiral arms. Near its centre, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole powers a narrow jet. Select Jet to highlight this outflow. The schematic greatly enlarges the central activity; the black hole itself is unresolved at the scale of the whole galaxy.

Select Core, Envelope or Jet to explore the stellar body and central outflow. Motion is illustrative, not a measured speed.

A giant in the Virgo Cluster

M87 is a dominant member of the Virgo Cluster. Its central black hole, M87*, was the subject of the Event Horizon Telescope’s first black-hole shadow image, released in 2019. The third scene here is an artistic explanation, not that observational image.