The initial images were captured in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of radio telescopes located around the world that work together to form an imaging tool the size of a planet. The first image appeared like a blurry doughnut, according to NPR, but the researchers utilized a new approach known as PRIMO to reconstruct a more precise image. PRIMO is a “novel dictionary-learning-based algorithm” that “recovers high-fidelity images even in the presence of sparse coverage” by training on generated simulations of more than 30,000 black holes. In other words, it uses machine learning data based on what we know about the physical laws of the universe, particularly black holes, to generate a more refined and accurate image from the raw data recorded in 2017.
