Is this the best non-radio image of whatever's at the center of M87? How was it taken? The BBC News article First ever black hole image released shows the instantly-iconic radio image of the (almost certainly) supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, just released by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, also shown below.

Though it calls it a "first image", the article also shows a similarly edible-looking† donut-shaped image taken earlier, presumably using a different technology. However the caption doesn't explain what that is.

†https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5TEe.gif

Does anyone recognize the earlier image and/or know what imaging technology and wavelengths were used to construct it? Is it roughly the same scale? Are these comparable donut-hole images?




  Astronomers have suspected that the M87 galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its heart from false colour images such as this one. The dark centre is not a black hole but indicates that stars are densely packed and fast moving. Credit: DR JEAN LORRE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY





  The first ever picture of a black hole: It's surrounded by a halo of bright gas. Credit: EHT




Overly entheusiastic Wikipedia edit?
Your top image is this from Dr Jean Lorre stock science images.  Just a photo showing stars and the optical jet with a 22 MB CCD camera through a small telescope.  It is unfortunate that he chose a false color brightness scale with black at the top intensity.  But, that black region does not correspond to the true blackness in the interferometric image which has resolution 100,000 times higher.

For comparison, here's a False-col. optical image of spiral galaxy NGC 1097 by the same "artist", also with the dark center where the visible light intensity is actually a maximum.