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Attached are some older pictures of blackholes that predate the one released today, they are real, not simulations. Enjoy.
Just a reminder. Today's "first-ever" picture of a blackhole is not the first-ever. We have countless pictures of blackholes. This is just the first time we have been able to resolve the event horizon such that it takes up more than a single pixel. But like with all blackholes the blackhole itself is invisible and all you can see is the gravitational lensing around it. Something we have had for decades now.
It isnt the first ever photo of a blackhole, it is just the highest resolution of a blackhole we have.
@freemo 1px is not an image.
@raucao By that logic we have never seen any pictures of extraterrestrial stars either (aside from beetleguese).
But even then its more complex than that. Blackholes themselves can never be seen no matter how many pixels they resolve to. The only thing we can see is the einstein rings they cause. Those have taken up many pixels in the past just as they did in the most recent picture.
So still not the "first" no matter how you slice it.
@freemo That's splitting hairs over the word "seen" imo. By all accounts and measures, this is actually the first time anyone has seen the event horizon in a real image. And we can absolutely see a lot of stars in higher resolution than 1px. You can even do that with your naked eye. That's a rather absurd statement.
If you know so many images of the actual light around the event horizon (not from the mass rotating around the hole), I'd be happy to see one!
@raucao I also never claimed there were previous photos of "mass around a black hole". The picture released also wasnt mass around a black hole. there were photons that passed near, or emitted from the area around a black hole. Yes that is a new achievement, the WHOLE achievement was novel in many ways indeed. It just wasnt the first picture of a black hole as all, it was something much better than that.
@freemo But you can also split your own hairs and disagree with the EHT project's scientists. That's a valid opinion, of course. Thanks for clarifying your point./
@freemo I'd still be interested in which previous images you were talking about by the way.
@freemo No, that's my point. This is the first time you actually see the *light* (yes, photons) around the *event horizon*, not from the mass that the hole attracts. That's how I understand it, and that means you can very well argue that this is the first time ever that the event horizon was seen in an image.