[KnightOfWords]

Yes, we're using a telescope the size of the Earth to look at an object the size of our solar system in a galaxy about 55 million light years away. It's an infinitesimally small patch of sky.

On the other hand, the jet from the M87 black hole is quite large and we have good images of it. It's even resolvable by amateurs, I hope to take a picture of it over Easter with a small telescope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87#Jet

[O_H_E]

> 55 million light years

didn't he correct himself and said kilometers

[petschge]

55 million light years is about correct. Wikipedia still has 53.5 ± 1.63 Mly from older observations, but appendix I in paper https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab1141 has a bit more on the distance measurements they used. They arrive at 16.76 ± 0.75 Mpc, which translates into 54.7 ± 2.4 Mly.

[MR4D]

He corrected himself to say 500 billion billion kilometers after mistakingly saying light years.

I haven't done the math, but I believe that roughly equates to 55 million light years.

[O_H_E]

Yup, My bad.