A fleet of telescopes on and above Earth zooms in on M87’s enormous black hole

Fifty-five million light years from Earth lies a monster.

It's a supermassive black hole, one with the mass equivalent of 6.5 billion Suns. It may be hiding itself among the stars of the huge elliptical galaxy M87, but it does a bad job of it. It's right in the center of the galaxy, the first place we'd look. Also, as it feeds, it blasts out radiation from the material falling into it, making it bright and obvious.

And it's also roaring. Two long jets of material are screaming away from it at ...