Chandra Release - August 18, 2010

Visual Description: M87

The composite image of the galaxy M87 shows a large, brightly glowing object in the center that has swirls and filaments all around it.  The object resembles a strange red, orange and pale blue jellyfish, swimming in a dark blue sea. This central object is actually the area around a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Around the central object, there are several tiny objects that appear as white or light-colored dots. This image shows the eruption of a galactic "super-volcano" in the massive galaxy M87, as witnessed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NSF's Very Large Array (VLA).  The cluster surrounding M87 is filled with hot gas glowing in X-ray light ( in blue) that is detected by Chandra. As this gas cools, it can fall toward the galaxy's center where it should continue to cool even faster and form new stars.
However, radio observations with the VLA in (red-orange) suggest that in M87 jets of very energetic particles produced by the black hole interrupt this process. These jets lift up the relatively cool gas near the center of the galaxy and produce shock waves in the galaxy's atmosphere because of their supersonic speed.  The interaction of this cosmic "eruption" with the galaxy's environment is very similar to that of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland that occurred in 2010, shown as a small photo inset to the lower right. With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano. This hot gas then rises up in the atmosphere, dragging the dark ash with it.