A new image of the supermassive black hole called M87 has been captured with the help of a telescope in Greenland, which turns out to be clearer than ever before.

Scientists made a historic announcement in the spring of 2019, when they released the world's first image showing a black hole. It depicts the black hole at the center of the giant galaxy Messier 87 in the constellation Virgo. It is 55 million light-years away from Earth, and its mass is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Recorded using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT Collaboration has now published a new, more detailed image of this object than ever before, created with the help of a telescope in Greenland and data previously recorded by the EHT, the EHT wrote. Engadget. Although the previous image was sharpened once, this process was performed by artificial intelligence. (By the way, the result was amazing, you can see it here).

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The first image, submitted in 2019, is a bit blurry, but shows the donut-like shape that scientists had previously predicted. In the center of the image, the black hole itself can be seen – or rather not seen – while absorbed material from nearby stars, which makes up the accretion disk, sparkles around it.

With the help of the Greenland Telescope, it is now possible to take a clearer image than before. In addition, a new data analysis technique was used to make the result as accurate as possible.

The Doppler effect is clearly visible in the recording. This is the bright spot that shines brighter than its surroundings. This spot shifted to the right in the time between the two images, which is what scientists expected anyway.

Regarding this discovery, Brett Jeter, a scientist at the ASIAA Astronomical Institute in Taiwan, said that while according to the theory of general relativity, the size of the ring should be approximately constant, the brightest part of the accretion disk is wandering. Thanks to current and previous observations, researchers can test their theories about the magnetic field and plasma environment.

The EHT team's work will continue in 2024. Experts are confident that they will soon be able to produce the first video of a black hole.

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