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Published December 2025 | Version Published
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Horizon-scale variability of M87* from 2017–2021 EHT observations

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  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 3. ROR icon Harvard University
  • 4. ROR icon University of Valencia
  • 5. ROR icon Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
  • 6. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
  • 7. ROR icon University of Malaya
  • 8. ROR icon The University of Texas at San Antonio
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  • 10. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Abstract

We report three epochs of polarized images of M87* at 230 GHz using data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) taken in 2017, 2018, and 2021. The baseline coverage of the 2021 observations is significantly improved through the addition of two new EHT stations: the 12 m Kitt Peak Telescope and the Northern Extended Millimetre Array (NOEMA). All observations result in images dominated by a bright, asymmetric ring with a persistent diameter of 43.9 ± 0.6 μas, consistent with expectations for lensed synchrotron emission encircling the apparent shadow of a supermassive black hole. We find that the total intensity and linear polarization of M87* vary significantly across the three epochs. Specifically, the azimuthal brightness distribution of the total intensity images varies from year to year, as expected for a stochastic accretion flow. However, despite a gamma-ray flare erupting in M87 quasi-contemporaneously to the 2018 observations, the 2018 and 2021 images look remarkably similar. The resolved linear polarization fractions in 2018 and 2021 peak at ∼5%, compared to ∼15% in 2017. The spiral polarization pattern on the ring also varies from year to year, including a change in the electric vector position angle helicity in 2021 that could reflect changes in the magnetized accretion flow or an external Faraday screen. The improved 2021 coverage also provides the first EHT constraints on jet emission outside the ring, on scales of ≲1 mas. Overall, these observations provide strong proof of the reliability of the EHT images and probe the dynamic properties of the horizon-scale accretion flow surrounding M87*.

Copyright and License

© The Authors 2025. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academia Sinica; the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile via NCN19_058 (TITANs), Fondecyt 1221421 and BASAL FB210003; the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (including the Feodor Lynen Fellowship); an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Centre node in the Netherlands, the NL astronomy research network NOVA and the astronomy institutes of the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, and Radboud University; the ALMA North America Development Fund; the Astrophysics and High Energy Physics programme by MCIN (with funding from European Union NextGenerationEU, PRTR-C17I1); the Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (60477, 61497, 62286) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant GBMF-8273) - although the opinions expressed in this work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of these Foundations; the Brinson Foundation; the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program; Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the China Scholarship Council; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation fellowships (2020M671266, 2022M712084); ANID through Fondecyt Postdoctorado (project 3250762); Conicyt through Fondecyt Postdoctorado (project 3220195); Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencia y Tecnología (CONAHCYT, Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356, CBF2023-2024-1102, 257435); the Colfuturo Scholarship; the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM, projects IN112820 and IN108324); the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for the VICI award (grant 639.043.513), the grant OCENW.KLEIN.113, and the Dutch Black Hole Consortium (with project No. NWA 1292.19.202) of the research programme the National Science Agenda; the Dutch National Supercomputers, Cartesius and Snellius (NWO grant 2021.013); the EACOA Fellowship awarded by the East Asia Core Observatories Association, which consists of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (grant 610058) and Synergy Grant “BlackHolistic: Colour Movies of Black Holes: Understanding Black Hole Astrophysics from the Event Horizon to Galactic Scales” (grant 10107164); the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements RadioNet (No. 730562), M2FINDERS (No. 101018682) and FunFiCO (No. 777740); the European Research Council for advanced grant “JETSET: Launching, propagation and emission of relativistic jets from binary mergers and across mass scales” (grant No. 884631); the European Horizon Europe staff exchange (SE) programme HORIZON-MSCA-2021-SE-01 grant NewFunFiCO (No. 10108625); the Horizon ERC Grants 2021 programme under grant agreement No. 101040021; the FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo á Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) under grant 2021/01183-8; the Fondes de Recherche Nature et Technologies (FRQNT); the Fondo CAS-ANID folio CAS220010; the Generalitat Valenciana (grants APOSTD/2018/177 and ASFAE/2022/018) and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-3561, GBMF-5278, GBMF-10423); the Institute for Advanced Study; the ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by European Union – NextGenerationEU; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR)– Project CUP F53D23001260001, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) research grant “Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond” (grant No. 443220636) and DFG research grant 443220636; Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowship (research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation); the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT; grant JPMXP1020200109); the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Joint Institute for Computational Fundamental Science, Japan; the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSW-SYS008, ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP21H01137, JP18H03721, JP18K13594, 18K03709, JP19K14761, 18H01245, 25120007, 19H01943, 21H01137, 21H04488, 22H00157, 23K03453); the MICINN Research Projects PID2019-108995GB-C22, PID2022-140888NB-C22; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (103-2119-M-001-010-MY2, 105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 105-2119-M-001-042, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-013, 106-2119-M-001-027, 106-2923-M-001-005, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, 107-2119-M-001-041, 107-2119-M-110-005, 107-2923-M-001-009, 108-2112-M-001-048, 108-2112-M-001-051, 108-2923-M-001-002, 109-2112-M-001-025, 109-2124-M-001-005, 109-2923-M-001-001, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007 and 110-2923-M-001-001); the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of Taiwan (111-2124-M-001-005, 112-2124-M-001-014, 112-2112-M-003-010-MY3, and 113-2124-M-001-008); the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Taiwan Yushan Young Scholar Program; the Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences of Taiwan; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC23K1508, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellowship; NASA Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF2-51431.001-A, HST-HF2-51482.001-A, HST-HF2-51539.001-A, HST-HF2-51552.001A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555; the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2016YFA0400704, 2017YFA0402703, 2016YFA0400702); the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC, grants NSTC 111-2112-M-001 -041, NSTC 111-2124-M-001-005, NSTC 112-2124-M-001-014); the US National Science Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-1126433, OIA-1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST-1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST-1310896, AST-1440254, AST-1555365, AST-1614868, AST-1615796, AST-1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1726637, OISE-1743747, AST-1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1935980, AST-1952099, AST-2034306, AST-2205908, AST-2307887, AST-2407810); NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AST-1903847); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11873028, 11933007, 11991052, 11991053, 12192220, 12192223, 12273022, 12325302, 12303021); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752; the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561; Brain Pool Program: RS-2024-00407499; Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721, 2021R1A6A3A01086420, 2022R1C1C1005255, 2022R1F1A1075115); the POSCO Science Fellowship of the POSCO TJ Park Foundation; Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellowships; NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation; Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017-00648); the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science); the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) grants (Individual CEEC program - 5th edition, https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/04106/2020, https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/04106/2020, PTDC/FIS-AST/3041/2020, CERN/FIS-PAR/0024/2021, 2022.04560.PTDC); the Princeton Gravity Initiative; the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (grants PID2022-140888NB-C21, PID2022-140888NB-C22, PID2023-147883NB-C21, RYC2023-042988-I); the Severo Ochoa grant CEX2021-001131-S funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; The European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101093934 (RADIOBLOCKS); The European Union “NextGenerationEU", the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, the CUII of the Andalusian Regional Government and the Spanish CSIC through grant AST22_00001_Subproject_10; “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) through fellowship codes LCF/BQ/DI22/11940027 and LCF/BQ/DI22/11940030; the University of Pretoria for financial aid in the provision of the new Cluster Server nodes and SuperMicro (USA) for a SEEDING GRANT approved toward these nodes in 2020; the Shanghai Municipality orientation program of basic research for international scientists (grant no. 22JC1410600); the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2021-013); the Simons Foundation (grant 00001470); the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation grant CEX2021-001131-S funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; the Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the South African Research Chairs Initiative, through the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO, grant ID 77948), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation (NRF), an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) of South Africa; the Swedish Research Council (VR); the Taplin Fellowship; the Toray Science Foundation; the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (grant no. ST/X508329/1); the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE, contract 89233218CNA000001); and the YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship. This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (RS-2024-00449206). We acknowledge support from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) of Brazil through PROEX grant number 88887.845378/2023-00. We acknowledge financial support from Millenium Nucleus NCN23_002 (TITANs) and Comité Mixto ESO-Chile. We thank the staff at the participating observatories, correlation centers, and institutions for their enthusiastic support. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2017.1.00841.V and ADS/JAO.ALMA#2019.1.01797.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)/NRAO, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725; the ASTROVIVES FEDER infrastructure, with project code IDIFEDER-2021-086; the computing cluster of Shanghai VLBI correlator supported by the Special Fund for Astronomy from the Ministry of Finance in China; We also thank the Center for Computational Astrophysics, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. This work was supported by FAPESP (Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo) under grant 2021/01183-8. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden). The SMA is a joint project between the SAO and ASIAA and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the NAOJ, ASIAA, and KASI, as well as the Ministry of Finance of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China and Natural Science Foundation of China grant 11873028. Additional funding support for the JCMT is provided by the Science and Technologies Facility Council (UK) and participating universities in the UK and Canada. The LMT is a project operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrófisica, Óptica, y Electrónica (Mexico) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). The IRAM 30 m telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain and the NOEMA interferometer on Plateau de Bure, France are operated by IRAM and supported by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), MPG (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany), and IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain). The SMT is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a part of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, with financial support of operations from the State of Arizona and financial support for instrumentation development from the NSF. Support for SPT participation in the EHT is provided by the National Science Foundation through award OPP-1852617 to the University of Chicago. Partial support is also provided by the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TG-AST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. This research is part of the Frontera computing project at the Texas Advanced Computing Center through the Frontera Large-Scale Community Partnerships allocation AST20023. Frontera is made possible by National Science Foundation award OAC-1818253. This research was done using services provided by the OSG Consortium (Pordes et al. 2007; Sfiligoi et al. 2009), which is supported by the National Science Foundation award Nos. 2030508 and 1836650. Additional work used ABACUS2.0, which is part of the eScience center at Southern Denmark University, and the Kultrun Astronomy Hybrid Cluster (projects Conicyt Programa de Astronomia Fondo Quimal QUIMAL170001, Conicyt PIA ACT172033, Fondecyt Iniciacion 11170268, Quimal 220002). Simulations were also performed on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart, and on the Pi2.0 and Siyuan Mark-I at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The computer resources of the Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC) and the Finnish Computing Competence Infrastructure (FCCI) project are acknowledged. This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca), and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (https://alliancecan.ca/en). The EHTC has received generous donations of FPGA chips from Xilinx Inc., under the Xilinx University Program. The EHTC has benefited from technology shared under open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER). The EHT project is grateful to T4Science and Microsemi for their assistance with hydrogen masers. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the extended staff of the ALMA, from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018. We would like to thank A. Deller and W. Brisken for EHT-specific support with the use of DiFX. We thank Martin Shepherd for the addition of extra features in the Difmap software that were used for the CLEAN imaging results presented in this paper. We acknowledge the significance that Maunakea, where the SMA and JCMT EHT stations are located, has for the indigenous Hawaiian people.

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Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2509.24593 (arXiv)

Dates

Submitted
2025-06-06
Accepted
2025-08-24
Available
2025-12-16
Published online

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