M87 Detail

This image is a blowup of the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87.  This galaxy is located about 55 million light years away and has the mass of about 1 trillion suns.  The galaxy also has a superluminal jet and is surrounded by somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 elliptical clusters.  This image is a blowup of M87 only (see elsewhere in the gallery for an image of M87 and its environs) and one can easily see the 5000+ light year jet as well and many, many globular clusters.

This galaxy contains a supermassive black hole in its center (weighing several billion solar masses) and is a rich source of both gamma and X-rays.

The SEDS picture of this can be found at the link below.  This also shows both the jet and several of the globular clusters.  (The SSRO image has been rotated to be in the same orientation as the SEDS picture.

seds.org/messier/more/m087_gbsd.html