Reuters photo.
Washington: Scientists, who published the image of a black hole from a nearby galaxy in 2019, published a new image of the same with more details and clarity, Reuters reported.
They revealed the new image on Thursday, with improved details using image reconstruction algorithms, in addition to data received from original telescope observations.
Black holes are celestial entities exerting gravitational pull so strong no matter or light can escape, which makes them very difficult to observe.
The ring of light featured in the new image is about half the width of what it looked like in the previous picture. A larger "brightness depression" is also there in the centre, making it a doughnut hole. The depression is caused by the ring of light- the material being sucked into the object- and other matter disappearing into the black hole.
Though the image is still blurry, it is more refined than the 2019 version.
The black hole in question is supermassive and is residing in a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87, which is 54 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy has a mass 6.5 billion times that of our sun and is more luminous than Milky Way.
One of the researchers said that he referred to the previous image of the black hole as a 'fuzzy orange donut,' but he calls the new image the 'skinny donut'.
The researchers are members of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, a global collaboration started in 2012, formed to directly study a black hole's immediate environment.
They said that this was the first time they used machine learning to fill the gaps where they didn't have data about the black hole.