M 87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo, approximately 54 million light years from Earth. Almost featureless and without dust lanes, its stars show a nearly perfect spherical distribution and the galaxy's luminosity diminishes with distance from its center. M 87 is known for its large number of globular clusters, approximately 1,200 (compared to the Milky Way's 150-200). Globular clusters are groups of very old stars tightly bound by gravity.

M 87 lies at the center of the Virgo cluster, more than 1,300 galaxies covering approximately 8 degrees in the sky (for reference, the moon's diameter is approximately 1/2 degree, so the Virgo cluster spans 16 moon-diameters).

626 5-minute exposures were taken using Luminance, Red and Green filters using 3 telescopes on our widefield array, totaling 52 hours. We shot Blue exposures, but these were technically unusable. Instead, we constructed a synthetic Blue channel by subtracting Red and Green channels from the Luminance (white light) channel. The result is a fair approximation of true color. The image was processed in PixInsight and Photoshop.

Shot and processed by the SC Observatory Team: Mike Selby, Stefan Schmidt and Andy Chatman