Messier 87 (M87)

Messier 87 (M87), also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, is a supergiant elliptical galaxy located about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It is one of the largest and most massive galaxies in the local universe, containing several trillion stars and around 15,000 globular clusters. For comparison, our Milky Way has only about 150-200 globular clusters.

One of the most remarkable features of M87 is its supermassive black hole at the core, which has a mass of about 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. This black hole was famously imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019, providing the first direct visual evidence of a black hole3. The image showed an asymmetric ring of radio emission surrounding a dark central region, which is the black hole's shadow.

M87 is also known for its relativistic jet, a stream of subatomic particles ejected from the galaxy's core at nearly the speed of light. This jet extends at least 4,900 light-years from the galaxy and is a powerful source of radio and X-ray emissions.

The galaxy's elliptical shape and lack of distinctive dust lanes give it an almost featureless appearance, typical of giant elliptical galaxies. M87 is a dominant member of the Virgo Cluster, which contains around 2,000 galaxies.

You can find more detailed information on Wikipedia and NASA Science.