Black Hole photo came from galaxy Messier 87 (M87)

[ilan]

You saw the 1st photo of a black hole? Now see its home galaxy
Paul Scott Anderson in SPACE | April 29, 2019

The 1st-ever photo of a giant black hole made headlines earlier this month. Now see some beautiful images of M87, the great galaxy that it calls home, located some 55 million light-years from Earth.

The 1st direct black hole photo came from a galaxy known as Messier 87. Here’s the galaxy’s image from the Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared telescope launched in 2003 and still operating as of 2019. You can’t see the hole itself in this image, but you can see 2 massive jets of material (and their aftershocks), ejected from the disk of material rotating around the hole. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC.

Earlier this month, scientists unveiled the first-ever photo taken of a black hole. It was a phenomenal achievement, and that image of the hot, glowing donut-shaped ring of gas and dust – surrounding the black hole itself, which can’t be seen – will go down in history as one of the most epic photos in space science. You can thank the Event Horizon Telescope for this first black hole image; this international group worked for years to accomplish it. Now … want some context for the black hole image? The first several images on this page let us step back a bit, to see how the giant black hole – 6.5 billion times more massive than our sun – appears in relation to its host galaxy, Messier 87 (aka M87). It’s a great view!

NASA released the image above – from its orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope – on April 25, 2019. It shows the black hole’s galaxy in the infrared. Although neither the black hole nor its event horizon can be seen here, you can see two massive jets of material being ejected from the event horizon out into space at nearly the speed of light, just one indication of the power of the central black hole. You thought black holes suck in material with gravity so strong that even light can’t escape? That’s true. But other material can become trapped in the disk around a black hole’s event horizon, and later be ejected again back out into deep space.

M87 is very far away – 55 million light-years away from Earth – and has been studied for over 100 years, including by observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and NuSTAR. The jets were first seen back in 1918, although their connection to a giant black hole was completely unknown at the time. The jets were first noticed by astronomer Heber Curtis as “a curious straight ray” extending from the center of the galaxy. What was this odd feature?
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Check earlier posts (from two weeks ago) and you will find the article with the first image captured of a black hole. In and of itself, the image here is incredible, showing a black hole ejecting matter from its event horizon. The event horizon marks the boundry of the point of no return. Beyond it, nothing (not even light) can escape being swallowed by the black hole. - ilan

[Kimbo]

have to love black holes, except if you are trapped in them!!

[ilan]

That would definitely ruin the day!