The image of the galaxy M87 was taken at the time, or rather captured, using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Because the picture was taken with eight telescopes on five continents. The data was analyzed for months and the result was a fuzzy looking orange ring. This was also important because it was proof of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Machine learning improves the picture
But now there is a new version of the original recording, not for the first time, by the way. An optimized image was created and published two years ago. At that time it was shown what part of the black hole looks like in polarized light. But now there is another improved recording, and the original data (originally from 2017) has been revised with a new algorithm.
Old photo on the left…
… on the right the one optimized by PRIMO
According to a publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, PRIMO was used. The abbreviation stands for “Principal-component Interferometric Modeling” and is a “novel dictionary-based algorithm that uses realistic simulations of expanding black holes as a training set”. The scientists continue: ‘By learning the correlations between the different regions of the space of the interferometric data, this approach enables the acquisition of high-fidelity images even with sparse coverage and achieves the nominal resolution of the EHT array.’
The differences in the result are also easily recognizable with the naked eye; the black hole is much better recognizable in the PRIMO image. “I affectionately refer to the previous image as ‘blurry orange donut’ and refer to this image as ‘skinny donut’ which sounds incredibly unappetizing. We also talked about the ‘diet donut’ which is equally unappetizing,” said Lia Medeiros, lead author of the work told the news agency Reuters. Incidentally, the technique should also be applied to the second image of a black hole (Sagittarius A*), which was revealed last year.
- First direct image of a black hole taken in 2019
- Merged and revised data from different telescopes
- Original data revised with new algorithm
- Result: black hole clearly more recognizable
- Result: “Fuzzy Orange Donut” becomes “Thin Donut”
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