Object Name:

M87

Object Description:

Giant Elliptical Galaxy

Position (J2000):

R.A. 12h 30m 49s.42
Dec. +12° 23' 28".03

Constellation:

Virgo

Distance:

54 million light-years (17 Megaparsecs)

Dimensions:

This image is 3.3 arcminutes (48,000 light-years or 15,000 parsecs) wide.

Science Team:

This image was created from HST data from proposal 9401: P. Cote (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria BC), J. Blakeslee (Dominion Astrophysical Observatory/Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics and Washington State University), L. Ferrarese (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria, BC), A. Jordan (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), S. Mei (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees), D. Merritt (Rochester Institute of Technology), M. Milosavljevic (California Institute of Technology), J. Tonry (University of Hawaii), E. Peng (Peking University, Beijing), and M. West (European Southern Observatory, Chile).

HST data also used from proposal 10543: E. Baltz (Stanford University), T. Lauer (NOAO/AURA), A. Crotts (Columbia University), A. Gould (Ohio State University Research Foundation), P. Gondolo (University of Utah), M. Shara (American Museum of Natural History), J. Silk (University of Oxford), S. Zepf (Michigan State University), and D. Zurek (American Museum of Natural History).

Instrument:

ACS/WFC

Filters:

F475W (SDSS g), F606W (V), and F814W (I)

Exposure Date:

December 2002 - December 2003, January - March 2006

Image Credit:

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Release Date:

August 5, 2008

Color:

The image is a composite of several separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges in the yellow and near infrared. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

Orientation/Scale: