A closer look at the flaring feature in the M87 jet
  The radio-loud active galactic nucleus in M 87 hosts a powerful jet fueled by
a super-massive black hole in its center. A bright feature 80 pc away from the
M 87 core has been reported to show superluminal motions, and possibly to be
connected with a TeV flare observed around 2005. To complement these studies
and to understand the nature of this feature, we analyzed 2 cm VLBI data from
15 observing runs between 2000 and 2009. This feature is successfully detected
at the milli-Jansky level from 2003 to 2007. Our detections show that its
milli-arcsecond structure appears to be extended with a steep spectrum, and no
compact or rapidly moving features are observed. Our results do not favor a
blazar scenario for this feature.
