Scientists Get Best Look Yet at Supermassive Black Hole - Slate Magazine (blog)

Researchers in the past have studied the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, explains Shep Doeleman, assistant director of MIT's Haystack observatory and lead author of the study. But that one is apparently a bit of a weakling as far as black holes go, with a mass just 4 million times that of the sun, and it doesn't appear to produce these polar jets. The black hole at the center of M87 is 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun, and its plasma beams are marvelous.