60 million lightyears away, the giant elliptical galaxy M87, or Virgo A, is one of the most dominant galaxies in the closest big cluster of galaxies to us, the famous Virgo Cluster.
M87 is 120,000 lightyears across, somewhat larger than the Milky Way. However, whereas the Milky Way is disk-shaped, M87 is almost spherical, thus containing ten times as many stars as the Milky Way.
Many other, more distant, galaxies can be seen in this image as small orangish dots.
Update 2019
On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration confirmed the exciting rumors that, in the center of M87, a black hole had been imaged for the first time!
