Chandra Release - January 6, 2020

Visual Description: M87

An X-ray image of a galaxy with a supermassive black hole, M87, is shown in 3 panels. The main panel of the graphic shows the entire length of M87's jet seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a thin and knotted burst of dark orange stretching for about 18,000 light years. Multiple "knots" of X-ray emission seen here are created when material sporadically falls onto the M87 black hole, creating bursts of X-ray light that travel along the jet and away from the black hole. At lower left, two insets show Chandra observations taken in 2012 and 2017 respectively of a small region near the base of the jet. The source in the lower left panel looks like a cotton ball in pale orange, and is X-ray emission from material around the black hole. The other source also looks like a pale orange cotton ball and is a knot in the jet about 900 light years from the black hole. This knot moves away from the black hole between 2012 and 2017 and also fades by 70%.