AAO image reference AAT 53. « Previous || Next »
Top left is NE. Image width is about 6 arc min
Image and text © 1987-2002, Anglo-Australian Observatory, photograph by David Malin.
Messier 87 (NGC 4486) lies near the centre of the nearby cluster of galaxies in Virgo at a distance of about 50 million light years. Although the physical boundaries of elliptical galaxies are not well defined, (see deep image) their mass can be, and by any standards M87 is enormous. It contains several thousand billion stars. Associated with this giant galaxy are large numbers of globular clusters, visible in this photograph as the cloud of slightly fuzzy objects around it. Like all ellipticals, M 87 is composed mainly of old stars and is largely devoid of the materials needed to make new ones. The galaxy is not inert however; high energy X-rays have been detected from an extensive outer halo and the galaxy itself is also known as Virgo A, the strongest radio source in the Virgo cluster. The source for this extreme behavior is probably a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.
Entry from NGC 2000.0 (R.W. Sinnott, Ed.) © Sky Publishing Corporation, 1988: