A Jet from Galaxy M87 . ... Hubble Heritage Team ( STScI / AURA ), NASA Explanation: What's causing a huge jet to emanate from the center of galaxy M87 ? ... The above picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998 shows clear details, however. The most popular hypothesis holds that the jet is created by energetic gas swirling around a massive black hole at the galaxy's center. ... M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy residing only 50 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies . ...