Independent analysis largely supports first black-hole image
Researchers using a different way to combine telescope measurements largely corroborate the original image of the shadow of M87*, a supermassive black hole.
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An independent analysis of telescope data, including new images, largely corroborates the findings behind the first picture of a black hole’s shadow, Nature said on 11 November 2026. The finding adds a separate check on an image whose circular shape some researchers had questioned.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the image in 2019. It showed the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, known as M87*: a bright ring surrounded a darker central disk, or shadow. The ring’s radius was roughly consistent with what was known about the black hole’s size.
A challenge to the image
Some researchers argued that the circular shape was an artifact of the techniques used to reconstruct the image. Beginning in 2022, Kobe University astrophysicist Junichiro Makino and collaborators questioned the conclusions. They used one of the EHT’s analysis techniques with slightly different assumptions and obtained a blob of radio emissions rather than a ring.
Analysis
A different combination of measurements
To make an image, the EHT combines simultaneous measurements from ground-based radio telescopes across several continents. Reconstructing an image from those measurements is extremely challenging, but the arrangement can in principle provide the detail of a single radio dish as wide as Earth.
The new study’s authors are S. Lai, N. Thyagarajan, O. I. Wong and F. Diakogiannis. The researchers used an algorithm to combine telescope measurements differently from the original analysis, producing new images that largely support its findings.
The linked study’s title identifies an independent interferometric observable. The available report does not detail how it works, which measurements were combined, or the quantitative agreement and uncertainties.
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