History

The galaxy M 87 was discovered on May 5, 1779 by the German astronomer Johann Köhler. Charles Messier sighted them on March 18, 1781 and wrote: «Nebula without a star in Virgo, below and right next to an 8th magnitude star. The star has the same right ascension as the nebula [...] This nebula has the same brightness as nos. 84 and 86.» ^{[196, 281]}

In 1918, a strange straight beam 20 arc seconds long and 2 arc seconds wide was discovered in M 87, which appeared to come from the bright core of the galaxy and was much bluer than the rest of the galaxy. In 1947 a strong radio source was discovered in the constellation Virgo and named «Virgo A». The measured position showed a correspondence with M 87. In 1953 it could be proven that the source of this radio emission was the blue jet from M 87. In the «Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio Sources» published in 1959, it has the designation 3C 274 and is the fifth most powerful radio source in the sky. In 1966 it was also discovered that M 87 and the jet were a powerful source of X-rays, the energy of which was about ten times that in the optical and radio realms. ^{[4, 288, 289]}

Physical Properties

The elliptical galaxy M 87 is 55 million light years away from us and is home to several trillion (10¹²) stars, a supermassive black hole of about 6.5 billion solar masses and about 15,000 globular clusters. For comparison, our Milky Way contains a few hundred billion stars and around 150 globular clusters. The monstrous galaxy M 87 is the dominant member of the neighboring Virgo galaxy cluster, which contains around 2000 galaxies.

Fig. 1 is a composite image of images in visible light and in the infrared and shows the most impressive feature of this galaxy: a jet consisting of relativistically accelerated matter originating from the central supermassive black hole in the core of M 87. In 2019, researchers succeeded thanks to the interconnection of eight radio telescopes distributed around the globe to take a photo of a black hole for the first time. Petabytes of data were processed in a supercomputer for this purpose. (Fig. 4) ^{[215, 287]}

Finder Chart

M 87 is located in the constellation Virgo on the line of the two stars Vindemiatrix (ε Virginis) and Denebola (β Leonis). The outermost Telrad circle is in the middle of the two stars. M 87 is to the east of it.

Visual Observation

762 mm aperture: Using EAA (Electronically Assisted Astronomy): The jet in the Messier 87 galaxy could only be seen on a Canon EOS R by means of strong zooming in the live photo. Seldom have we been able to experience such good transparency and calmness.

— 1. 6. 2019, Eduard von Bergen