Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2021

31 MAY-JUNE 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING In March 2019 at the La Laguna As- tronomical Observatory, we took a sequence of images of M87 to record the jet of matter that em- anates outwards from its center. This plasma jet, or relativistic jet, was first identified in 1918 by astronomer Heber Curtis (Lick Observatory), but it was many years later before the details of the expulsion of matter were finally revealed. These galactic jet-shaped structures are not unusual. The idea of captur- ing this one from OLA started as a challenge when we saw that our first images showed a small promi- nence indicating its presence, and we wondered if it was possible to improve on that result. The first images recorded on March 9, 2019 were archived for further processing. On April 10, just a month I mage of the M87 field taken from OLA on 9 March 2019. [M. Sánchez (SAG), A. Porcel (SAG/OLA)] later, the media announced with considerable fanfare that the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team had captured the first image of a black hole. Quite fortuitously, the imaged black hole was the one at the center of M87, and the jet we were trying to observe in our images has long been the clearest evidence of what that galaxy hosts at its core. The co- incidence was exciting: while we were trying to capture and measure the jet of highly-collimated matter emerging from the core of M87, an international team of astronomers was concretizing the first visual evi- dence of the very black hole that caused it. In truth, it has long been I n the background, the black hole- powered jet of electrons and sub- atomic particles that streams from the center of M87. [NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]