M87*
What is M87*?
Black holes & quasars· Distance 55 million ly. The first black hole ever photographed, in April 2019. It sits at the heart of the giant galaxy M87 in Virgo, and the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of radio telescopes around the world, captured its shadow.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
Its place in the sky
A black hole, in the direction of Virgo.
Mass, distance, nature
| Mass | ~6.5 billion Suns |
|---|---|
| Distance | ~55 million ly |
| Event horizon | ~40 billion km across |
| Jet | ~5,000 ly long |
| How the mass is measured | the shadow imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope plus stellar motions |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Discovery and name
The first image of a black hole (April 2019) — the Earth-sized EHT array captured this 6.5-billion-Sun giant.
M87* a year later — the bright spot had moved
The M87* picture released in 2019 was made from data collected in April 2017. In 2024 a second picture was released, made from data taken a year later, in April 2018. The ring was the same size, but its brightest part had turned by about 30 degrees. For the first time, two years of the same black hole could be compared side by side.
The unchanged size matters. The size of a black hole's shadow is set by its mass, and the mass hardly changes in a year. The bright spot, on the other hand, is made by the gas circling the black hole, so it moves when the flow of gas changes. Together the two pictures show a black hole that stays the same while the gas around it keeps moving.
The black hole in depth
M87* is the black hole at the centre of M87, a giant galaxy about 55 million light-years away in Virgo. It has about 6.5 billion times the Sun's mass. The boundary from which not even light can escape is called the event horizon, and here it is about 40 billion km across — roughly four times the width of Neptune's orbit.
A jet of gas about 5,000 light-years long streams from the galaxy's centre. In 1918 the American astronomer Heber Curtis first noticed it and described it as a curious straight ray. Such jets form when some of the matter being pulled toward a black hole is flung out at nearly the speed of light. So the centre of this galaxy was thought special long before its black hole was photographed.
On 10 April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope team released a picture of an orange ring. Eight radio telescopes on several continents observed the same spot at the same time, working together like a telescope as big as the Earth. One side of the ring is brighter because the gas on that side is moving toward us as it circles. In the Sky view the galaxy M87 appears in Virgo, between Denebola and Vindemiatrix, on spring evenings.
Frequently asked
- What is the mass of M87*?
- The mass of M87* is ~6.5 billion Suns.
- How far is M87* from Earth?
- The distance of M87* is ~55 million ly.
- Where in the sky is M87*?
- M87* lies in the direction of Virgo.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.