It wasn't a photographic image (they're using radio waves, not visible light). This is a visual representation of the radio waves.
And yes, this is one way of representing the data. I'm not sure exactly what your question is though, as actually getting this data is really important to confirm a variety of theories and also to potentially open up new avenues for investigation. And this cost orders of magnitude less than Hubble, whose purpose was also to generate photographs, seeing as how they simply connected together existing radio telescopes.
The point was to demonstrate that this technique is feasible. Now they can use it to image all sorts of other stuff and learn lots more.
An image (or picture). I'm no expert but I think it's more like an MRI than a photograph or x-ray. It's not a direct image or projection. It's calculated.
I'm confused. Given that "images" are just data, how is taking a bunch of data about a black hole and combining it into a single "picture" of a black hole not also gathering data to help us study black holes?
As I understand it, the notability of the project is that it found a novel way to process data from coordinated data collectors scattered around the earth into a single coherent data set (with more resolution than any single collector could gather).
Did you watch the announcement press conferences and Katie's TED talk? All this info is out there. Start with the links from yesterday on the HN story.
And yes, this is one way of representing the data. I'm not sure exactly what your question is though, as actually getting this data is really important to confirm a variety of theories and also to potentially open up new avenues for investigation. And this cost orders of magnitude less than Hubble, whose purpose was also to generate photographs, seeing as how they simply connected together existing radio telescopes.
The point was to demonstrate that this technique is feasible. Now they can use it to image all sorts of other stuff and learn lots more.