Messier 87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with about 1 trillion stars in the constellation Virgo. It has an active supermassive black hole at its core, which forms the primary component of an active galactic nucleus. The galaxy is a strong source of multiwavelength radiation, particularly radio waves. It is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky and a popular target for amateur and professional astronomers.
About Messier 87 in brief
Messier 87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with about 1 trillion stars in the constellation Virgo. The French astronomer Charles Messier discovered M87 in 1781, and cataloged it as a nebula. M87 is about 16. 4 million parsecs from Earth and is the second-brightest galaxy within the northern Virgo Cluster, having many satellite galaxies. It has an active supermassive black hole at its core, which forms the primary component of an active galactic nucleus. The galaxy is a strong source of multiwavelength radiation, particularly radio waves. It is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky and a popular target for both amateur and professional astronomers. The black hole was imaged using data collected in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, with a final, processed image released on 10 April 2019. In 1969, a strong component of the X-ray source of the jet emerging from the core of the galaxy was suggested as the cause of the radio emission. In 1966, the United States Naval Research Laboratory’s Aerobee X-1 rocket identified M87 as the first X- ray source in the Virgo constellation. It was then the only known elliptical nebula for which individual stars could be resolved, although it was pointed out that globular clusters would be indistinguishable from individual stars at such distances. In 1947, a prominent radio source, identified as M87 at least until 1954, was identified to be M87 by the U.S. Naval Research Research Laboratory’s Aerobees Research Laboratory. In 2009, M87 was the first galaxy to be identified as an extragalactic nebula at a distance of 2″ 70–70″ with an angular width of 20″ with a position of 260° to an angular distance of 1,500 parsecs.
In 2012, the University of California, Los Angeles named M87 a member of the Alpha Epsilon Cluster, a group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, and a number of other galaxies. The Milky Way is the only other galaxy to have been named as a galaxy by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who called it a “galactic nebulae” M87 has an almost featureless, ellipsoidal shape typical of most giant elliptical galaxies, diminishing in luminosity with distance from the center. Its galactic envelope extends to a radius of about 150 kiloparsecs, where it is truncated—possibly by an encounter with another galaxy. Its interstellar medium consists of diffuse gas enriched by elements emitted from evolved stars. It also has a nearly spherically symmetric distribution, with population density decreasing with increasing distance from its core. The following year, a supernova within M87 reached a peak photographic magnitude of 21.5, although this event was not reported until photographic plates were examined by the Russian astronomer Innokentii A. Balanowski in 1922. In 1922, the American Astronomer Edwin Hubble categorized M87 as one of. the brighter globular ne Bulae, as it lacked any spiral structure, but like spiral nebulAE, appeared to belong to the family of non-galacticNebulae.
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This page is based on the article Messier 87 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
