High-resolution original image here. Technical details about the EHT:
Creating the EHT was a formidable challenge which required upgrading and connecting a worldwide network of eight pre-existing telescopes deployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites. These locations included volcanoes in Hawai`i and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica.
The EHT observations use a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds — enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris.
This image is fated to be as iconic as the Pale Blue Dot and Earthrise.
Of particular note is that the algorithm to combine the data from all the different sources was the product of research by Dr. Katie Bouman, who is the overnight face of women in STEM, deservedly so.
Here’s a wide angle shot of the area around the black hole, from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray telescsope: