M87 (Messier 87)

Messier 87 (M87) is a giant elliptical galaxy located about 53 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster. It features a supermassive black hole at its core, which is one of the largest known, with a mass billions of times that of the Sun. M87 is notable for its prominent jet of energetic particles shooting out from the black hole’s vicinity, powered by accretion of material. Its size and activity make it an important object for studying galaxy evolution and black hole physics. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever image of a black hole’s shadow in M87.