NASA X-ray spacecraft catches jet erupting from 1st supermassive black hole imaged by humanity

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray spacecraft have obtained the most detailed image yet of the jet erupting from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). If this black hole sounds familiar, that is because it made history in 2019 when it was revealed as the first black hole to be imaged by humanity . M87* is located around 55 million light-years from Earth and is ravenously feeding on infalling gas and dust. As it does so, matter is channeled to the poles of this black hole, which has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun . This matter is blasted out at speeds approaching the speed of light as powerful jets that stretch out for thousands of light-years. Jets of M87* have been imaged before in other wavelengths of light , such as optical light and infrared, but this is our most detailed look at these jets in X-rays. And the X-rays revealed a complex flow of material through the jets that's more dynamic than previously seen. "We could already see changes in the jet, but never with this level of detail in X-rays," Camille Poitras, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Laval University and lead of the study, said in a statement . "Structures that previously appeared blended together can now be distinguished, allowing us to better follow the jet's evolution over more than a decade of observations." Some structures in the jets appeared to be moving at speeds five times faster than the speed of light. …