That's where Bouman's algorithm -- along with several others -- came in. Using imaging algorithms like Bouman's, researchers created three scripted code pipelines to piece together the picture.
"We developed ways to generate synthetic data and used different algorithms and tested blindly to see if we can recover an image," she told CNN. The result? A groundbreaking image of a lopsided, ring-like structure that Albert Einstein predicted more than a century ago in his theory of general relativity. In fact, the researchers had generated several photos and they all looked the same. The image of the black hole presented on Wednesday was not from any one method, but all the images from different algorithms that were blurred together.
"One of the insights Katie brought to our imaging group is that there are natural images," Fish said. "Just think about the photos you take with your camera phone -- they have certain properties. ... If you know what one pixel is, you have a good guess as to what the pixel is next to it."
So it wasn't an actual photo...it was imagery done by a computer scientist.... spaceisfake NASA= NotASpaceAgency