Galaxies
Messier 87
Messier 87 is a giant elliptical galaxy in Virgo, about 55 million light-years from Earth, and the dominant galaxy near the core of the Virgo Cluster. It hosts the supermassive black hole M87*, the first black hole ever imaged directly, and powers a prominent relativistic jet visible from radio to X-ray wavelengths.
Milky Way
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that contains the Solar System and an estimated hundreds of billions of stars. Spanning roughly 100,000 light-years across its stellar disk, it includes a central bar, multiple spiral features, a diffuse stellar halo, and an extended dark matter halo. The galaxy’s center hosts the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, and its broader environment is part of the Local Group of galaxies.