NEW YORK —Four years ago, the first picture of a black hole was taken, showing a flaming, fuzzy doughnut-shaped entity. Now, scientists have improved that image of cosmic beauty using artificial intelligence.

The revised image, which was released on Thursday in Astrophysical Journal Letters, maintains the original form but has a narrower ring and higher resolution.

The image that was made public in 2019 provided a glimpse of the massive black hole that is 53 million light-years from Earth at the center of the M87 galaxy. 5.8 trillion miles make up a light-year. It was created using information obtained from a global network of radio telescopes that displayed swirling light and gas.

But despite the collaboration of multiple telescopes, data gaps persisted. Researchers used the same data in their most recent study and machine learning to fill in the gaps.

The final image resembles the original, but with a thinner "doughnut" and a darker core, according to the researchers.

Lead author and astronomer Lia Medeiros of the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey stated, "For me, it feels like we're actually witnessing it for the first time.

Researchers anticipate learning more about the characteristics and gravity of the black hole in subsequent studies thanks to their improved understanding. And according to Medeiros, the group intends to apply machine learning to other photographs of astronomical objects, perhaps even the black hole that lies in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.