Science & Tech · Space · 6 hrs ago
Independent analysis confirms the ring in M87's black hole image
Australian researchers independently reanalysed data behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s 2019 image of black hole M87*.
The original image showed a bright ring around the black hole’s shadow, but some later analysis questioned whether the ring was real.
The telescope combines observations from facilities around the world, and gaps in its measurements and distortions from Earth’s atmosphere can affect how the data is turned into an image.
The team grouped telescope measurements in threes to reduce errors, rather than using pairs as in the standard method.
They also used machine learning trained on images that were not of black holes, to limit the influence of expectations.
Their new image closely matches the original ring, supporting the finding that general relativity describes how light behaves around a black hole.
The result strengthens confidence in the landmark image and provides an independent check of the earlier analysis.
An independent analysis using a new machine-learning method reproduced the ring in the Event Horizon Telescope’s first black hole image.
The image showed the black hole M87* and was released in 2019.
The researchers used the same underlying telescope data but grouped measurements from three telescopes to reduce errors.
Their result was nearly identical to the original image, supporting the finding that general relativity describes the space-time around a black hole accurately.
The study was published in Nature on 11 November 2026.
- Who
- A team including Nithyanandan Thyagarajan and Samuel Lai at Australia’s CSIRO.
- What
- An independent analysis reproduced the ring in the Event Horizon Telescope image of M87*.
- When
- The study was published on 11 November 2026. The original image was released in 2019.
- Where
- The researchers analysed data collected by the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of telescopes around the world.
- Why
- To independently check the image, whose reconstruction could be affected by gaps in measurements and errors from telescopes and the atmosphere.
Researchers supporting the ring
Researchers questioning the ring
Image interpretation
Researchers supporting the ring
The new independent analysis reproduced a ring nearly identical to the original image.
Researchers questioning the ring
A 2022 analysis of the data found no ring.
Reliability
Researchers supporting the ring
The researchers said their method reduced errors and used machine learning trained on non-black-hole images to limit bias.
Researchers questioning the ring
The articles report concerns that gaps in the telescope measurements and atmospheric distortion could affect the reconstructed image.
The Event Horizon Telescope released its first image of a black hole, showing M87* with a ring structure.
An analysis of the M87* data found no ring.
The independent analysis was published in Nature and reported to have reproduced the ring.
- Black hole
- M87*
- Original image
- Released in 2019
- Research team
- Four Australian researchers
- Analysis method
- Measurements grouped in triplets, with a machine-learning algorithm
- Publication
- Nature, 11 November 2026
3 sources
What people are saying
It has only a handful of telescopes spread across the globe, which leaves large gaps in its measurements that the imaging algorithm has to fill in
By combining measurements from sets of three telescopes, we preserve the information about the object’s shape while cancelling out errors from the atmosphere and the telescopes
This is the first truly independent validation of the EHT image, an important step in the scientific process
It is extremely gratifying to see that an elegant, entirely independent method recovers the ring structure of M87 across several years, in excellent agreement with the EHT Collaboration's published results