#BLACK HOLE REAL IMAGE SKIN#

Lia Medeiros (Institute for Advanced Study and University of Arizona) and three other EHT astronomers have now tried something different. This approach, coupled with the way they blurred the deduced image to show only features they were sure were real, left them with a wide, fuzzy ring with few discernable details. For the original image, scientists used algorithms that made no assumptions about what the EHT was looking at, to avoid telling themselves a shadow ringed by hot, glowing gas was there when it actually wasn’t. That can and should make us squeamish: We need to know that the assumptions behind algorithms’ infilling aren’t leading us astray. To make an image from such piecemeal details, algorithms have to fill in the missing data.

#BLACK HOLE REAL IMAGE SKIN#

It’s as though you were given the height, ear size, and skin texture of an elephant and then had to figure out exactly what the creature looks like. So instead, scientists piece together data taken at different observatories spread across the globe, carefully reconstructing the shadow from sparse information using complex computer algorithms. To resolve that, you need a planet-size radio telescope - which doesn’t exist. The silhouette is about 40 microarcseconds wide, the size of a hydrogen atom seen at arm’s length. The EHT can’t merely take a picture of a black hole. (That’s the image on the left.)Īstronomers have now changed the lenses on the computational glasses they use to reconstruct the image, creating the view on the right. This black hole, the leviathan dwelling in the heart of the elliptical galaxy M87, rocketed to worldwide fame in 2019 when the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released their hard-won image of the black hole’s silhouette. But they’re two views of the same black hole. These two images might look like different things: one a fat, blurry orange doughnut, the other the sinuous noose on the end of a lariat. Medeiros (Institute for Advanced Study), D. Future work could pin down these kinds of structures and use them to learn more about the material accreting onto the black hole. It might be matter swirling around the black hole and falling in.

The tail at the bottom might or might not be a real feature, as it changes quite a bit depending on the analysis. The original image from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration of the shadow of the black hole M87* (left), compared with a new version generated by the PRIMO algorithm (right).

Black hole real image