A curious straight ray
IMAGINE A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF GALAXY M87’S central regions, with its raging accretion disk distorted by the extreme gravity of the 6.5-billion-solar-mass black hole within. Now envision two tightly collimated, relativistic jets screaming out for thousands of light-years in opposite directions, perpendicular to the accretion disk. Visually detecting any trace of the blazing jet would be an extraordinary observation from 54 million light-years away, yet incredibly it’s quite possible for an observer with the proper equipment and observing conditions to succeed.
M87 and its jet
M87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy (classified as type-cD in the Yerkes system), is located deep in the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. M87 weighs in at around 200 times the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy. More impressively, its supermassive black hole was the first to have its shadow imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope, an astonishing and historic achievement.
M87’s visual jet that’s aimed roughly in our direction is about 5,000 light-years long and may be pointed only 15° or so away from beaming directly at us. This makes it a likely ‘misaligned blazar’ — if the jet were pointed directly at us, M87 would have all the characteristics of a blazar.
Highly energetic conditions in the black hole’s accretion disk can give rise to jets, such as the one we see in M87. The interplay between matter (or plasma) in the accretion disk,, making this an even more fantastic object.
