Space Slinky: Zoom Into Black Hole Jet

Astronomers have assembled, from more than 13 years of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, a series of time-lapse movies showing a jet of superheated gas — 5,000 light-years long — as it is ejected from a supermassive black hole. This video begins with a view of the stars and galaxies in the spring constellation Virgo. We zoom into the giant elliptical galaxy M87, which lies near the center of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. A high-speed jet of hot plasma is buried deep inside the galaxy. A sup