Close-up Look at a Jet near a Black Hole in Galaxy M87 (Hubble WFPC2 View)

A visible light image of the giant elliptical galaxy M 87, taken with the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in February 1998, reveals a brilliant jet of high-speed electrons emitted from the nucleus (diagonal line across image). The jet is produced by a 3-billion-solar-mass black hole .