M87

A jet of electrons and other sub-atomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light streams from galaxy Messier 87 (M87) in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The blue color of the jet contrasts with the yellow glow from the combined light of billions of stars and globular clusters that make up this galaxy. Lying at the center of M87 is a supermassive black hole, which has swallowed up a mass equivalent to 2 billion times the mass of our Sun. The jet originates in the disk of superheated gas swirling around this black hole and is propelled and concentrated by the intense, twisted magnetic fields trapped within this plasma. The jet emanating from M87 is one of the nearest and is the most well-studied of all extra-galactic jets, but many others exist. For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/968