WASHINGTON—The 2019 release of the first image of a black hole was hailed as a significant scientific achievement. But truth be told, it was a bit blurry—or, as one astrophysicist involved in the effort called it, a “fuzzy orange donut.”
Scientists on Thursday unveiled a new and improved image of this black hole—a behemoth at the center of a nearby galaxy—mining the same data used for the earlier one but improving its resolution by employing image reconstruction algorithms to fill in gaps in the original telescope observations.
Hard to observe by their very nature, black holes are celestial entities exerting gravitational pull so strong no matter or light can escape….