Astronomers question if the first picture of a black hole is accurate

The Event Horizon Telescope’s first image of a black hole showed a distinctive ring feature, but a reanalysis of their data has raised concerns over whether that ring of light is real



Space



19 May 2022

Artist’s representation of the black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy

Shutterstock / Vadim Sadovski

There may be a problem with the first image of a black hole. After three years of analysis, a group of researchers in Japan has produced an image of M87* – the supermassive black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy – that looks markedly different from the one released by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in 2019. The researchers claim that the EHT group may have made a major mistake.

To make the first black hole …

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