Physics Photo of the Week

  M87 - Elliptical Galaxy in Virgo: Special properties Photo by College View Observatory The object (M87) in this photo is a distant galaxy - about 50 million light years distant - a galaxy of many billions of stars within the constellation Virgo.  At first glance it resembles a "blob" - more resembling a comet without a tail than a galaxy.   Many galaxies are much more photogenic showing grand spirals, dust lanes, and other interesting structures.  M87 is a class of galaxies called  elliptical galaxies. This elliptical galaxy is also rather ordinary in first appearance in that it appears spherical rather than a football-shaped ellipsoid.  Just a "blob" of stars without any noticeable structure unlike the Andromeda Galaxy (see PPOW for Jan. 18, 2019) . However, upon close inspection of the photograph, seen much clearer in a zoomed-in photo at right, there is an apparent "jet" or ray of light made much more visible by cropping the above image and enlarging