A cosmic searchlight
esahubble_opo0020a July 6th, 2000
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and NASA/ESA
Streaming out from the centre of the galaxy M87 like a cosmic searchlight is one of nature's most amazing phenomena, a black-hole-powered jet of electrons and other sub-atomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. In this Hubble telescope image, the blue jet contrasts with the yellow glow from the combined light of billions of unseen stars and the yellow, point-like clusters of stars that make up this galaxy. Lying at the centre of M87, the monstrous black hole has swallowed up matter equal to 2 billion times our Sun's mass. M87 is 50 million light-years from Earth.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0020a/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Image Details
Position Details
Color Mapping
- ID
- opo0020a
- Subject Category
- C.5.1.4 C.5.2.1 C.5.3.2
- Subject Name
- Messier 87, NGC 4486, Virgo Galaxy
- Credits
- The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and NASA/ESA
- Release Date
- 2000-07-06T07:00:00
- Lightyears
- Redshift
- Reference Url
- https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0020a/
- Type
- Observation
- Image Quality
- Distance Notes
- Distance in light years from NED
- Facility
- Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
- Instrument
- WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2
- Color Assignment
- Red, Green, Blue, Purple
- Band
- Infrared, Optical, Optical, Ultraviolet
- Bandpass
- I, V, B, U
- Central Wavelength
- 814, 606, 450, 300
- Start Time
- Integration Time
- Dataset ID
- Notes
- Coordinate Frame
- ICRS
- Equinox
- J2000
- Reference Value
- 187.701965876, 12.3924702039
- Reference Dimension
- 1222.0, 1276.0
- Reference Pixel
- 611.0, 638.0
- Scale
- -7.02185251222e-06, 7.02185251222e-06
- Rotation
- -65.82
- Coordinate System Projection:
- TAN
- Quality
- Full
- FITS Header
- Notes
- Creator (Curator)
- ESA/Hubble
- URL
- http://www.spacetelescope.org/
- Name
- Telephone
- Address
- Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
- City
- Garching bei München
- State/Province
- Postal Code
- D-85748
- Country
- Germany
- Rights
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
- Publisher
- ESA/Hubble
- Publisher ID
- esahubble
- Resource ID
- opo0020a
- Resource URL
- http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/original/opo0020a.tif
- Related Resources
- Metadata Date
- 2003-12-09T17:16:17+01:00
- Metadata Version
- 1.1
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
