 Images of space can be amazing, but have you ever wanted to make your very own? NASA's Astrophoto Challenges lets you do just that. You can select data from telescopes on Earth and in space, choose colors to apply, and produce your very own expression of the universe. For this year's challenge, we take inspiration from one of the most amazing astronomy pictures of the decade, the first image to ever see to the edge of a black hole. This supermassive black hole lies at the heart of a galaxy named M87, and you will have two different ways to make your own picture of this host galaxy. In the micro-observatory challenge, you get to control an Earth-based robotic telescope to take your very own image using visible light. In the NASA Datasets Challenge, you have a selection of images taken across the spectrum of light, x-ray, visible, infrared, and radio that you can mix and match into your own unique view of M87. Please make sure to share your image with us. Tell us about your creative choices. Why did you use the color schemes that you did? Were your choices scientific, artistic, or both? Now go create your own astronomy photo by selecting either the micro-observatory challenge or the NASA data challenge, or try both. Hello everyone, I'm Phil Lamar, and this is NASA's Ask the Astronomers Live, where you, I assume are live, can ask real astronomers who are also live, your questions as I chat with them about some of the most amazing things in the universe. Today, we're asking you a question. What would your galaxy look like? Now what this means is we're talking about how you, us, any of us who are perhaps not astronomers, can use data from NASA space telescopes to make your own images of this galaxy with a supermassive black hole in its center M87, as most of you probably heard in the introduction there. So you can use NASA data or you can take control of a NASA telescope and request your own images of M87 from NASA's Universe of Learning's ground-based micro-observatory robotic telescope network. It's pretty impressive. And for those of you joining us on Facebook or YouTube, ask your questions in the comment section of the stream so we can see them and ask the astronomers, because that's what we're here to do. And also, if you want to find out about upcoming shows like this and see lots of fun astronomy videos, please visit the website UniverseUnplugged.org. There's a lot to learn and a lot to enjoy. All right, our guests today are two astronomers who are involved with the astrophoto challenges for the galaxy M87. Today we are joined by Dr. Eileen Meyer from UMBC in Baltimore, Maryland and Dr. Ruta Parnadas from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and the Smithsonian. Hello, Ritu. Hello, Eileen. Hi. Eileen, can you tell the folks at home, presuming they're not sitting in cafes on their phones, a little about yourself and the work you do? Sure. I am a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County which means that I spend part of my time teaching physics to undergraduates and part of my time running a research group that's studying sources like M87, galaxies like M87 that have a super massive black hole at their center and these black holes are special, they're actively accreting matter and sometimes they produce these things called jets which we will talk about today because M87 is one of those. Ah, excellent. Ritu, how about you? Yeah, hi, everyone. Thanks, Phil. I am an astrophysicist and science communicator at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian and what that means is that I spend a large chunk of my time looking at all of astrophysics, especially NASA astrophysics and working out how to bring that to the public. I do this with NASA's Universe of Learning which is hosting this astrophoto challenge that we're going to talk about today and I spend another chunk of my time studying the universe for myself and having a lot of fun thinking about dark energy and how to weigh clusters of galaxies. Ah, weighing clusters. Somehow that sounds kind of blue collar. Alright, so in the introduction we talked a good bit about the NASA's astrophoto challenge and how folks can take this data, turn it into images that represent things that we may not actually be able to see with human eyes but specifically the astrophoto challenge is focused on the Galaxy M87, right? Yes. What is M87? I'm assuming it's not an M80 which was, you know, a firecracker we used to play with when I was a kid. I'm presuming there's no connection. That was actually going to be my joke. But yes, it is not a firecracker. It is a galaxy. It's a type that we call a giant elliptical. So a galaxy is just a big collection of stars. Giant ellipticals are kind of shaped like a big ball. M87 has trillions of stars in it and it's relatively nearby. It's in our sort of cosmic neighborhood, if not backyard. It's about 50 million light years away which actually in astronomical terms is close and the reason that astronomers love M87 so much is that it has this really supermassive black hole at the center. So that's six billion times the mass of the sun. So supermassive, that's what we mean. It means about a million to a billion times the mass of the sun. And I think most galaxies have one of these. M87 is special because very recently we took the most high resolution image of that black hole in M87. You're looking at it right now. You can see this ring of light. So the ring of light is actually coming not from the black hole but from plasma that's very hot and very close to the black hole and that little sort of dark area in the middle is where the black hole is. So we're seeing the shadow of the black hole. The shadow of the black hole. I love that. And wait, Eileen, you mentioned that most galaxies have a black hole. Although I love the fact that astronomers have called us something that is supermassive supermassive. That's so on point as opposed to something like jumbo shrimp. No oxymorons here. Does our galaxy, the Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole? It does. It's a little bit smaller. So it's more on the several million times the mass of the sun size, but that's still pretty supermassive. And it fortunately is not doing any crazy explosive activity right now. It's pretty quiescent, which is probably how we like it for our own backyard. The ones that we're interested in studying some of us are the ones that are doing some interesting things, which if we have time to talk about, we'll talk about how these jets and things that come out of the black hole actually disrupt their galaxies. Oh, but the Milky Way black hole is not shooting out jets of plasma. And by plasma we're not talking about blood. That means hot gas, yes. I should clarify, yes. Well, in case we have a lot of EMTs watching. Quick, get us a black hole stat. Now, Rutsu, it's funny because we're talking about the images, but these are not just like somebody out there with a Polaroid camera taking pictures. No, actually, so when we talk about images in space, when a telescope takes an image, generally what it takes is not a color picture. It is a black and white image that shows all the light that the camera can see coming from that object. So like, if we point a telescope at M87, we get a black and white image that says, and the brighter an area is, that means, oh, that area of M87 is really bright and is giving off more light. Now, interestingly, for this astro-photo challenge that we have, we are using images of a variety of different kinds of light. So actually, if I could get like the image number one up, yes, thank you. So we are going to let you play with NASA images of this galaxy in X-ray, invisible, and infrared, and radio. Many different kinds of light. And by the way, Phil, like you mentioned, you know, astronomers name things very literally. As you guys can see maybe here, this is called the very large array because it is a very large array of telescopes. This is a theme going through telescopes if we have some time. Like, you know, we have the extremely large telescope, which is an extremely large telescope, and so on and so forth. Anyways, so you will be able to use images from, excuse me, three NASA telescopes and the NRA is very large array. And each of these shows a different kind of light. Now, remember, we have visible in the middle here or like in the blue just off to the side. And by the name, we can tell that, you know, that is visible to us. Our eyes can see it, but our eyes can't see X-ray or infrared or radio. But clearly, we're seeing these pictures. What that means is that these are representative images. We use representative colors. So we've sort of assigned X-ray the color red. So where you see brighter red, almost white, that means that's a lot more X-rays coming out of M87. And where you see that image is darker, that means there are fewer X-rays. Same thing for visible, same thing for infrared and radio. So we assign these colors to represent the brightnesses in different kinds of light, and then you can put them together. So you see like, you know, is one spot brighter in X-ray or is it brighter in visible? Or, you know, is this super bright point in infrared also bright in other types of light and so on and so forth. So these are the pictures you could get to play with if you do this challenge. And the color coding is so you can distinguish when you're looking at the images. Okay, this information is coming on the infrared spectrum. This information is coming on the X-ray. Okay, that's as opposed to just coloring everything the same color and not being able to distinguish after. Exactly, and you don't have to choose the same colors we get. You can choose whatever colors you want. And you can choose them with this, you know, you can, two colors look pretty together and you can use them. So I can have my jewel tone universe. Oh, yes. Somebody just asked that question. Visually, I just asked, can we use the colors we like for different data? And you said yes. You can choose whatever colors you want. And we even have like some multicolor gradients that you can choose as well. So you could give something like a watermelon filter where, you know, bright points are red and dark points are green and it sort of goes through. So you can play around with things like that. Oh, that's fascinating. Now Eileen, you mentioned that M87 was not in our backyard, but in our neighborhood. And hopefully there's not a lot of construction and development going on there. But tell us more about M87 and where specifically it is. I mean, you covered you covered some of this. So M87 is about 50 million light years, which is actually fairly nearby. Those of you that are watching that like to actually look at the skies with your telescope or binoculars might know that there's a big cluster called the Virgo cluster of galaxies. And that's actually enough the Virgo constellation. And M87 is the brightest galaxy in that cluster. And yes, very good. So it's 55 million light years from us, which is actually in our kind of local neighborhood. And it's a very, very large galaxy. So I think we were going to have another comparison slide where we show that it's quite a bit bigger than the Milky Way. Yes, it's about 200,000 light years across. So it's a really massive, massive galaxy. It's big, it's old, it's been around a long time and it's this nice big ball of stars. Does it have the spiral arms that you see generally in depictions of our galaxy? No, it does not. Yes, quite different look. And in general, we think these are older galaxies that have gone through a few collisions and basically kind of smashed up any nice spiral structure they might have had. That's a kind of a very short way of describing galaxy evolution. Wow, that'll be interesting to know if galaxies have midlife crises. Well, they definitely do. Now, let's talk some more about the astrophoto challenge because that begins tomorrow, right? Yes, it starts tomorrow and runs through the first week or two of April. Sorry, of August, I misspoke. So it will be open for about six weeks and you will be able to either use those images from NASA and NRIO that we saw. Or as Phil mentioned earlier, you can ask for your own image from our ground-based network of telescopes. And this is micro-observatory, what you're seeing on the screen here. And if you ask it for a picture of M87, it will take you your very own image. It's only for you. Nobody else gets that data before you do. And you can process that and make a pretty picture. You can even ask it for three different filters. So micro-observatory, we talked about different kinds of light. This only looks at visible light. But you can say, show me all the red light coming from it and all the green light and all the blue light. And then put them together to make a multicolor image, which would actually be sort of like... I mean, if you make red, red and green, green and blue, blue while you're actually processing it, it would sort of look like to your eyes once you put those colors together. Oh, fascinating, fascinating. And yes, I think... Yeah, I was going to say, that's actually a really good segue to probably Image 5, which I think somehow we have not quite hit on talking about the jet in M87 yet, which I believe is... There we go. So this is Bluetooth, pretty much exactly what you were just talking about. So this is more of a zoomed-in picture of M87. You can see this thing, right, that's coming out of the bright center of M87. This is the jet. This is the jet of hot gas. And you can see that it's kind of bluer in color, right? So this is a multicolor visible image, as opposed to all that kind of hazy glow that's coming from the trillions of stars in the galaxy that's more of a yellow-type color. So this is an example of a multicolor visible image. And you can see very well that jet coming, not from the black hole, but from very close to the black hole. You see the jet is powered by the black hole, but to avoid confusing people, we're not saying that it's actually coming out of the black hole. That would be a misconception. Got it. Interesting. Oh, and Biju Samampili asks again, in which wavelength is the jet stream visible? But you said this photo is on the visible light spectrum, correct? Yes. And actually, that jet is visible in every band. You'll notice that in that first image. Yeah, so the orientations of these images differ a little, but here the little thing kind of sticking out is the jet. And you can see it in every single wavelength. So that's pretty cool also. Okay. Interesting. But again, it is not coming out of the black hole. That would be weird. The black hole. Well, I guess that's why it's black. It's out of light. But it is powered by and coming from surrounding area. Wow. Now, for anybody who missed the beginning of our show, because we had a really cool intro, this is Ask the Astronomers Live. And we're talking about NASA's astrophoto challenges, which start tomorrow, July 1st. And if you're watching us live on Facebook or YouTube, please go ahead and keep asking questions. Just put your questions in the comment section, and we'll pass them on to our astronomers here. All right. So as I said, today's topic is the NASA astrophoto challenge specifically focused on the Galaxy M87. Let's look at a few questions from our audience. Oh, oh, this isn't interesting. Since we were just talking about the jet Eileen, why is there only one jet of plasma? And why is there only one jet of plasma from being powered by the black hole? It's a great question. So the reason there's only one is not because there's only one. That's just how it works. So we have a great animation, I think it's video three, that shows kind of what we would see if we could, yeah, turn M87 sideways and see both of the jets at the same time. And then it's rotating so that we can actually only see one. So what's happening here is that one of the jets is coming towards us, one of them's going away. This hot gas is moving really fast, like very close to the speed of light. And this means that it's relativistic is what we would say. And that actually changes how the light appears to us on Earth. So the hot gas coming towards us, we can actually see it looking brighter because it's coming towards us so fast. And the hot gas moving away on the other side is actually much dimmer to the point where we can't even see it. And this is not particularly M87. This is common in astrophysical jets across the universe. So the only ones we see both have to be basically oriented flat. So plane of the sky so that we can see both. I see. So the images that we're seeing, that we're getting of M87 are obviously from our perspective and the jet is angled so that we only see one of them. But like if we were able to fly to a different galaxy, way over that side, we could see both possible. Yeah. And we can actually see the evidence of the other one. So you can just barely make it out in, I think, like the radio image is probably the clearest one where you can kind of see like a little puffy cloud happening on the other side. You're like, okay, that's actually because of that, what we call the counter jet, the jet going away from us. So we can see the evidence of it, although we can't see the sort of main part of it. Interesting. Now, this is a question, I guess, for both of you, but we've been looking at this image of the black hole in M87. How does that image relate to what we're doing with the astrophoto challenges? So yes, we have that iconic image of the black hole, which we were all so excited to see you back in 2019. And that black hole, as Eileen said, is at the center of M87, but we are looking at a much wider view. So in fact, if we can look at image number eight here, please. Yeah. So that black hole is at the very center of M87. You can see these insets here. We really have to zoom out to get the views that we're seeing in those NASA and NRIO images. And the interesting thing you'll see, especially if you play around with those images, is that even those telescopes have slightly different views of you. And we'll see the jets in the astrophoto challenges. You'll get to process the images and get your picture of the galaxy in the jet. And while you won't be able to get a picture of the black hole, that jet, as Eileen said, is there because of the black hole. So you'll get to see a picture of all the hot NASA plasma that the black hole is slingshotting out from near the center of the galaxy. OK. Wow. So we're zooming in to something. Oh, here's a question from the ACK Astro Club. They want to know, can someone participate in both NASA and micro-observatory challenges? Can you do both or is it you have to pick one? Of course. You can do both. I think I've had people do multiple instances of each one also. You can do as many as you want. However, if you really enjoy this and you've done both and you still want to do more, M87 isn't the only thing you can take a picture of or play around with data for. We have a whole host of things, both in our solar system, outside of our solar system, but in our galaxy and outside of our galaxy that you can ask this micro-observatory telescope network to take pictures of for you. There was, if you saw that image from before with all the little squares, yes. So you can take pictures of the planets, different star clusters, supernova remnants, other galaxies. And we still have the NASA images from previous astrophotos challenges loaded up in the same interface you'd use for this one. So after you do this, if you want to try making, say, the Whirlpool galaxy, we have the data for that on there still from like two years ago. So do us. And do us the images that you make. Wow. So basically I can just go to that website and get control of a telescope and tell them to do what I want to do. That sounds like it's easier for me than it is for you guys. Wouldn't you guys have to put in like paperwork and put in requests and all of that stuff? We have to put in proposals and then wait like several months and, you know, get very precise times and have to be very ready to take our data when we get that allotted time. Eileen, do you want to say anything about that? Like you've probably gone through this process more than I have. Yeah, that's our lives. Write proposals, wait for the data, but I mean it's an exciting life. I remember the first time the very large array was looking at something in the sky because my proposal was successful and it was like, you know, it was a top five experience for me. It was a big deal. Wow, well, I'm very excited. So now I can go on to the astrophoto challenge and bypass you guys. I can become a super astronomer. Oh, wait, we have a question here from David Gold. Does the M87 galaxy have an equivalent of our sun? Who wants to take that? I think I could, yeah, absolutely. There's with a trillion stars. One thing to keep in mind is the sun is a pretty star as things go. So, you know, M87 will have G-type stars like ours. It won't be quite the same because the galaxy that it is living in is obviously very different from the Milky Way. But it would, you know, potentially have a solar system as we're now finding around most stars. And so, yeah, I think you could say yes to that. Yeah, not a direct equivalent necessarily, but something in the same realm. Yes. And, Ritu, maybe you can take this one. What happens after someone submit, you know, they go, they become a super astronomer. They tell the telescope to do what they want and then they create their image and then they submit it. What happens after they submit their image? Right. So, after you submit your image, and as I said, please do submit your image, after you submit it, we here at NASA's Universe of Learning go through and look at every image that comes in. And we select some of them and showcase them on our website. And actually, we will have another live after the challenges over where we'll showcase several of your images. So, you can have your image shown on the NASA Universe of Learning website on this Astrophoto Challenge website. And you would have a NASA expert giving you feedback on it. We provide feedback on a select set of images. Like, it can be feedback on, whoa, you really got the jet coming out very nicely. Or, oh, I really like your color choices. They make me happy. Like, you know, all manner of feedback. And, yeah, and afterwards also, there is an opportunity for you to ask questions in case as you're doing this, you come up with things you want to know either about the galaxy or about micro-observatory. And we would answer your questions at this other Astroastronomers Live after the challenge is over. Wow, that's amazing. Oh, the ACK Astro Club is asking, in which format will they submit the images? But I'm guessing the Astrophoto Challenge will give that information. But you can address that also. The interface we have for people to use to process their images will help you save it in a format. I actually, I'm not sure, but I think it lets you save it as just an image like a JPEG or a PNG. And then you can submit that. There will be more information on the actual page for the challenge. Okay. Right, right. And, all right. Oh, another question from MineDude. What would the gas look like? I guess they're referring to the jets. What would the gas look like if we were in the galaxy? Is there enough energy to blast away a planet's atmosphere? Or would it create just a glow in the night sky? I mean, this might be supposition on our part. Eileen, but what do you think? Yeah. It would be very bad news for a planet to be in the jet of M87. It's bad news for the star, in fact. It's generally, you know, it's an interesting thing because the hot gas that we're talking about is still quite low in density. So you shouldn't think of it as like, as dense as the atmosphere on Earth. But it is very, very energetic. It carries a lot of energy. And so that will, in fact, definitely disrupt a planet or solar system that happened to traverse through the jet. Yeah, so we're lucky our black hole is not active. We're also far from it, unfortunately. Is there a sense of how far the jet shoots in terms of light years? It's 5,000 light years long, which is the main part. So that's sort of like that really bright part of it. Sort of the clouds of gas that accumulate is a bit bigger, but it's mostly within the galaxy. So it's not shooting out of the galaxy. We're not going to worry about getting hit by M87's black hole jet. Everybody duck! There are jets that leave, actually. Like, completely leave their host galaxy and travel millions of light years, but M87's not one of those. Okay, wow, that's amazing. Well, actually, this whole discussion has been amazing. I mean, we've been talking about M87, the supermassive black hole within it, and the chance that everyone has starting tomorrow to create images of that galaxy. So before we finish up, I wanted to ask you guys, do you have any final thoughts you want to say to the audience? Yeah, I just want to say that, you know, this is for you to explore and make your own image, and there is no right answer to what a good image is. There is no, like, standard where that an image has to meet to be good enough. We just want to see your representations of this galaxy. So whether you choose to, you know, color your image because you like the colors or whether you choose to color it in a way that makes sense to you scientifically, both are great. And we really, really want you to share your image with us. We have noticed in the past that a lot of people use the interface and make the images because we get the numbers of how many people use these images and, you know, do the processing. But then we get far fewer entries into the challenge, and that makes us really sad because we want to see your pictures. And I will tell you a secret which should not be a secret because I've heard many people say that, oh, man, people at NASA make such beautiful images. I could never do something like that. Astronomers, astrophysicists, majority of astronomers cannot make images, beautiful images, to save their lives. That is not part of our job. So the pretty images you see are actually made by image processing professionals, data visualization professionals. But for us who actually look up at the sky and look at data and do the science of it, we probably have never made an image as part of our work. So whatever you're doing, whatever level of processing you're doing is probably the level of processing we're doing if we want to play around with this stuff. So please don't feel shy to send us your images. We'd love to see them. Ah, OK. You're astrophysicists, not astrovisualists. You can use some help from the citizen scientists. OK. Yes. Some of these are far better than I could ever make. Many of these are far better than I could ever make, actually. Let me rephrase that. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. So they get better access to the telescopes, faster than you, and they make pretty, wow, this astro challenge is great. But before we wrap up, Eileen, do you have any final thoughts? Yeah, I just wanted to say that I'm so happy that there are people who are interested in what astronomers are doing and want to get their hands on the data. I think that's fantastic. And I just wanted to encourage people, if they like this, to look at some of the other cool things that are going on. Like there is this whole concept of citizen science where you can participate in an actual research project. There's basically the concept of crowdsourcing a lot of people to help categorize things. And there's a project called Zooniverse. I think they have the link here. Yeah, that's got a bunch of different projects that you can get involved in. And this is like real science research that you would participate in. Or even just things like looking up your local astronomy club or going to astronomy camp for you guys that are students. Don't just do the one thing and drop it. Keep up your interest in astronomy. We love to hear from you and love to hear that the public is doing these things. Thank you, guys. Thank you both for coming here and sharing your expertise. And thank you to NASA for sharing this opportunity. And thank you the audience for joining us today for our kickoff for NASA's astrophoto challenges for M87. Now, everyone can see this video that we just did as well as all of our other videos at UniverseUnplugged.org or just click on the link in the comments from where you're watching it. And please make sure to subscribe to Universe Unplugged on YouTube or follow us on Facebook so you won't miss any great shows like this one. All right, Dr. Eileen Meyer, Dr. Ruder Parnadas, thank you so much for being part of this. It was great talking with you guys. Thanks for having me. Of course. And until next time, I'm Phil Lamar and this has been Ask the Astronomers Live. Take care.