Key facts
- Category
- Black holes
- Object class
- Supermassive black hole
- Host
- Messier 87
- Scale fact
- 38 billion kmevent horizon diameter
- Mass
- ~6.5 billion solar masses
M87*
38 billion kmevent horizon diameter
Visual creditscaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
Details
M87* is the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87. The Event Horizon Telescope’s 2019 image resolved a bright emission ring around the black hole’s shadow; neither feature is the event horizon itself.
In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope published the first image of a black hole’s immediate surroundings: M87*, at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. The size of the resolved ring gave an independent mass estimate of about 6.5 billion Suns.
The 2019 image shows a bright, asymmetric ring of radio emission around a dark central region called the black hole’s shadow. Strongly bent light makes that shadow larger than the event horizon that casts it.
Links
- Editorial guides
- Universe journey
- Milky Way
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- M87* on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near M87* on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, M87* falls between Kuiper Belt and Holm 15A*. The band uses nearby Supermassive black hole records.
Shared physical scale
29.1billion km
Sources
References for M87*
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- M87* — Wikipedia
- Visual: scaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.