NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory Capture 3D View of Massive Galaxy

Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery by measuring the three-dimensional shape of one of the closest elliptical galaxies to Earth, M87. The galaxy has been found to be “triaxial,” or potato-shaped, thanks to a combination of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii. This new information will help scientists understand how large galaxies and their central black holes form. The team used the motions of stars around the galaxy’s supermassive central black hole to create a 3D plot and determine the black hole’s mass to a high precision, estimating it at 5.4 billion times the mass of the Sun. This discovery could help astrophysicists learn the black hole’s spin rate and provide insight into how M87 grew from the merger of many other galaxies.