Messier 87, a massive elliptical galaxy located approximately 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo, turns out to be triaxial, or potato-shaped, and hosts a supermassive black hole about 5.4 billion times the mass of the Sun, according to new observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory. A photo of the huge elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (left) is compared to its 3D shape as gleaned from meticulous...
