Incredible Light Show: Gas Jet Flaring From M87’s Black Hole

Hubble image of a gas jet blasing from the core of M87. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Madrid (McMaster University)

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. The Hubble Space Telescope has been keeping an eye on the very active galaxy M87 for years, and has now captured a flare-up in a jet of matter blasting from the galaxy’s monster black hole. This 5,000-light-year-long, narrow beam of radiation and plasma is as bright as a Star Wars light saber and as destructive as the Death Star. This extragalactic jet is being fueled and ejected from the vicinity of a monster black hole that is 3 billion times the mass of our Sun. “I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by accretion onto a black hole to increase in brightness in the way that this jet does,” says astronomer Juan Madrid of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “It grew 90 times brighter than normal. But the question is, does this happen to every single jet or active nucleus, or are we seeing some odd behavior from M87?”

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