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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Full list of authors: Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Algaba, Juan Carlos; Anantua, Richard; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Bach, Uwe; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Balokovic, Mislav; Barrett, John; Baubock, Michi; Benson, Bradford A.; Bintley, Dan; Blackburn, Lindy; Blundell, Raymond; Bouman, Katherine L.; Bower, Geoffrey C.; Boyce, Hope; Bremer, Michael; Brinkerink, Christiaan D.; Brissenden, Roger; Britzen, Silke; Broderick, Avery E.; Broguiere, Dominique; Bronzwaer, Thomas; Bustamante, Sandra; Byun, Do-Young; Carlstrom, John E.; Ceccobello, Chiara; Chael, Andrew; Chan, Chi-kwan; Chatterjee, Koushik; Chatterjee, Shami; Chen, Ming-Tang; Chen, Yongjun; Cheng, Xiaopeng; Cho, Ilje; Christian, Pierre; Conroy, Nicholas S.; Conway, John E.; Cordes, James M.; Crawford, Thomas M.; Crew, Geoffrey B.; Cruz-Osorio, Alejandro; Cui, Yuzhu; Davelaar, Jordy; De Laurentis, Mariafelicia; Deane, Roger; Dempsey, Jessica; Desvignes, Gregory; Dexter, Jason; Dhruv, Vedant; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Dougal, Sean; Dzib, Sergio A.; Eatough, Ralph P.; Emami, Razieh; Falcke, Heino; Farah, Joseph; Fish, Vincent L.; Fomalont, Ed; Ford, H. Alyson; Fraga-Encinas, Raquel; Freeman, William T.; Friberg, Per; Fromm, Christian M.; Fuentes, Antonio; Galison, Peter; Gammie, Charles F.; Garcia, Roberto; Gentaz, Olivier; Georgiev, Boris; Goddi, Ciriaco; Gold, Roman; Gomez-Ruiz, Arturo, I; Gomez, Jose L.; Gu, Minfeng; Gurwell, Mark; Hada, Kazuhiro; Haggard, Daryl; Haworth, Kari; Hecht, Michael H.; Hesper, Ronald; Heumann, Dirk; Ho, Luis C.; Ho, Paul; Honma, Mareki; Huang, Chih-Wei L.; Huang, Lei; Hughes, David H.; Ikeda, Shiro; Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette; Inoue, Makoto; Issaoun, Sara; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Janssen, Michael; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Joshi, Abhishek, V; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kocherlakota, Prashant; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; La Bella, Noemi; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Daeyoung; Lee, Sang-Sung; Leung, Po Kin; Levis, Aviad; Li, Zhiyuan; Lico, Rocco; Lindahl, Greg; Lindqvist, Michael; Lisakov, Mikhail; Liu, Jun; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Loinard, Laurent; Lonsdale, Colin J.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Marti-Vidal, Ivan; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Medeiros, Lia; Menten, Karl M.; Michalik, Daniel; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Moriyama, Kotaro; Moscibrodzka, Monika; Muller, Cornelia; Mus, Alejandro; Musoke, Gibwa; Myserlis, Ioannis; Nadolski, Andrew; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Fuentes, Santiago Navarro; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Oh, Junghwan; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Hector; Ortiz-Leon, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Paraschos, Georgios Filippos; Park, Jongho; Parsons, Harriet; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pesce, Dominic W.; Pietu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Potzl, Felix M.; Prather, Ben; Preciado-Lopez, Jorge A.; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ricarte, Angelo; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruiz, Ignacio; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sanchez, Salvador; Sanchez-Arguelles, David; Sanchez-Portal, Miguel; Sasada, Mahito; Satapathy, Kaushik; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schonfeld, Jonathan; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Souccar, Kamal; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tiede, Paul; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Torne, Pablo; Traianou, Efthalia; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; Turk, Matthew; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Vos, Jesse; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wielgus, Maciek; Wiik, Kaj; Witzel, Gunther; Wondrak, Michael F.; Wong, George N.; Wu, Qingwen; Yamaguchi, Paul; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, Andre; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhang, Shuo; Zhao, Guang-Yao; Zhao, Shan-Shan; Ozel, Feryal; Agurto, Claudio; Allardi, Alexander; Amestica, Rodrigo; Araneda, Juan Pablo; Arriagada, Oriel; Berghuis, Jennie L.; Bertarini, Alessandra; Berthold, Ryan; Blanchard, Jay; Brown, Ken; Cardenas, Mauricio; Cantzler, Michael; Caro, Patricio; Castillo-Dominguez, Edgar; Chan, Tin Lok; Chang, Chih-Cheng; Chang, Dominic O.; Chang, Shu-Hao; Chang, Song-Chu; Chen, Chung-Chen; Chilson, Ryan; Chuter, Tim C.; Ciechanowicz, Miroslaw; Colin-Beltran, Edgar; Coulson, Iain M.; Crowley, Joseph; Degenaar, Nathalie; Dornbusch, Sven; Duran, Carlos A.; Everett, Wendeline B.; Faber, Aaron; Forster, Karl; Fuchs, Miriam M.; Gale, David M.; Geertsema, Gertie; Gonzalez, Edouard; Graham, Dave; Gueth, Frederic; Halverson, Nils W.; Han, Chih-Chiang; Han, Kuo-Chang; Hasegawa, Yutaka; Hernandez-Rebollar, Jose Luis; Herrera, Cristian; Herrero-Illana, Ruben; Heyminck, Stefan; Hirota, Akihiko; Hoge, James; Schimpf, Shelbi R. Hostler; Howie, Ryan E.; Huang, Yau-De; Jiang, Homin; Jinchi, Hao; John, David; Kimura, Kimihiro; Klein, Thomas; Kubo, Derek; Kuroda, John; Kwon, Caleb; Lacasse, Richard; Laing, Robert; Leitch, Erik M.; Li, Chao-Te; Liu, Ching-Tang; Liu, Kuan-Yu; Lin, Lupin C-C; Lu, Li-Ming; Mac-Auliffe, Felipe; Martin-Cocher, Pierre; Matulonis, Callie; Maute, John K.; Messias, Hugo; Meyer-Zhao, Zheng; Montana, Alfredo; Montenegro-Montes, Francisco; Montgomerie, William; Nolasco, Marcos Emir Moreno; Muders, Dirk; Nishioka, Hiroaki; Norton, Timothy J.; Nystrom, George; Ogawa, Hideo; Olivares, Rodrigo; Oshiro, Peter; Perez-Beaupuits, Juan Pablo; Parra, Rodrigo; Phillips, Neil M.; Poirier, Michael; Pradel, Nicolas; Qiu, Richard; Raffin, Philippe A.; Rahlin, Alexandra S.; Ramirez, Jorge; Ressler, Sean; Reynolds, Mark; Rodriguez-Montoya, Ivan; Saez-Madain, Alejandro F.; Santana, Jorge; Shaw, Paul; Shirkey, Leslie E., Jr.; Silva, Kevin M.; Snow, William; Sousa, Don; Sridharan, T. K.; Stahm, William; Stark, Anthony A.; Test, John; Torstensson, Karl; Venegas, Paulina; Walther, Craig; Wei, Ta-Shun; White, Chris; Wieching, Gundolf; Wijnands, Rudy; Wouterloot, Jan G. A.; Yu, Chen-Yu; Yu, Wei; Zeballos, Milagros; Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration., We present the first Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the Galactic center source associated with a supermassive black hole. These observations were conducted in 2017 using a global interferometric array of eight telescopes operating at a wavelength of λ = 1.3 mm. The EHT data resolve a compact emission region with intrahour variability. A variety of imaging and modeling analyses all support an image that is dominated by a bright, thick ring with a diameter of 51.8 ± 2.3 μas (68% credible interval). The ring has modest azimuthal brightness asymmetry and a comparatively dim interior. Using a large suite of numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the EHT images of Sgr A* are consistent with the expected appearance of a Kerr black hole with mass ∼4 × 106 M⊙, which is inferred to exist at this location based on previous infrared observations of individual stellar orbits, as well as maser proper-motion studies. Our model comparisons disfavor scenarios where the black hole is viewed at high inclination (i > 50°), as well as nonspinning black holes and those with retrograde accretion disks. Our results provide direct evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and for the first time we connect the predictions from dynamical measurements of stellar orbits on scales of 103–105 gravitational radii to event-horizon-scale images and variability. Furthermore, a comparison with the EHT results for the supermassive black hole M87* shows consistency with the predictions of general relativity spanning over three orders of magnitude in central mass. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., 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) and Fondecyt 1221421, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; 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 Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (although the opinions expressed in this work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of these Foundations); Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the China Scholarship Council; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation fellowship (2020M671266); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356); the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), 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 IN112417 and IN112820); the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and grant OCENW.KLEIN.113; 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); the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements RadioNet (No 730562) and M2FINDERS (No 101018682); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; 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 Institute for Advanced Study; 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; DFG research grant "Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond" (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1); Joint Princeton/Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships, 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 Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; 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); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6; 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-003-007-MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, and 110-2923-M-001-001); 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 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A 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 Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-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-1716536, OISE-1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1935980, AST-2034306); 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); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, Brain Pool Program: 2019H1D3A1A01102564, Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721, 2021R1A6A3A01086420, 2022R1C1C1005255); Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellowships; 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 Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grants PGC2018-098915-B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, PID2019-108995GB-C21, PID2020-117404GB-C21); the University of Pretoria for financial aid in the provision of the new Cluster Server nodes and SuperMicro (USA) for a SEEDING GRANT approved towards these nodes in 2020; the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2021-013); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017- 0709); 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 Toray Science Foundation; Swedish Research Council (VR); 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. 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 is 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 carried out using resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Additional work used ABACUS2.0, which is part of the eScience center at Southern Denmark University. 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 Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca).

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Full list of authors: Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Algaba, Juan Carlos; Anantua, Richard; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Bach, Uwe; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Balokovic, Mislav; Barrett, John; Baubock, Michi; Benson, Bradford A.; Bintley, Dan; Blackburn, Lindy; Blundell, Raymond; Bouman, Katherine L.; Bower, Geoffrey C.; Boyce, Hope; Bremer, Michael; Brinkerink, Christiaan D.; Brissenden, Roger; Britzen, Silke; Broderick, Avery E.; Broguiere, Dominique; Bronzwaer, Thomas; Bustamante, Sandra; Byun, Do-Young; Carlstrom, John E.; Ceccobello, Chiara; Chael, Andrew; Chan, Chi-kwan; Chatterjee, Koushik; Chatterjee, Shami; Chen, Ming-Tang; Chen, Yongjun; Cheng, Xiaopeng; Cho, Ilje; Christian, Pierre; Conroy, Nicholas S.; Conway, John E.; Cordes, James M.; Crawford, Thomas M.; Crew, Geoffrey B.; Cruz-Osorio, Alejandro; Cui, Yuzhu; Davelaar, Jordy; De Laurentis, Mariafelicia; Deane, Roger; Dempsey, Jessica; Desvignes, Gregory; Dexter, Jason; Dhruv, Vedant; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Dougal, Sean; Dzib, Sergio A.; Eatough, Ralph P.; Emami, Razieh; Falcke, Heino; Farah, Joseph; Fish, Vincent L.; Fomalont, Ed; Ford, H. Alyson; Fraga-Encinas, Raquel; Freeman, William T.; Friberg, Per; Fromm, Christian M.; Fuentes, Antonio; Galison, Peter; Gammie, Charles F.; Garcia, Roberto; Gentaz, Olivier; Georgiev, Boris; Goddi, Ciriaco; Gold, Roman; Gomez-Ruiz, Arturo, I; Gomez, Jose L.; Gu, Minfeng; Gurwell, Mark; Hada, Kazuhiro; Haggard, Daryl; Haworth, Kari; Hecht, Michael H.; Hesper, Ronald; Heumann, Dirk; Ho, Luis C.; Ho, Paul; Honma, Mareki; Huang, Chih-Wei L.; Huang, Lei; Hughes, David H.; Ikeda, Shiro; Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette; Inoue, Makoto; Issaoun, Sara; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Janssen, Michael; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Joshi, Abhishek, V; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kocherlakota, Prashant; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; La Bella, Noemi; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Daeyoung; Lee, Sang-Sung; Leung, Po Kin; Levis, Aviad; Li, Zhiyuan; Lico, Rocco; Lindahl, Greg; Lindqvist, Michael; Lisakov, Mikhail; Liu, Jun; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Loinard, Laurent; Lonsdale, Colin J.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Marti-Vidal, Ivan; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Medeiros, Lia; Menten, Karl M.; Michalik, Daniel; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Moriyama, Kotaro; Moscibrodzka, Monika; Muller, Cornelia; Mus, Alejandro; Musoke, Gibwa; Myserlis, Ioannis; Nadolski, Andrew; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Fuentes, Santiago Navarro; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Oh, Junghwan; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Hector; Ortiz-Leon, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Paraschos, Georgios Filippos; Park, Jongho; Parsons, Harriet; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pesce, Dominic W.; Pietu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Potzl, Felix M.; Prather, Ben; Preciado-Lopez, Jorge A.; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ricarte, Angelo; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruiz, Ignacio; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sanchez, Salvador; Sanchez-Arguelles, David; Sanchez-Portal, Miguel; Sasada, Mahito; Satapathy, Kaushik; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schonfeld, Jonathan; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Souccar, Kamal; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tiede, Paul; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Torne, Pablo; Traianou, Efthalia; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; Turk, Matthew; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Vos, Jesse; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wielgus, Maciek; Wiik, Kaj; Witzel, Gunther; Wondrak, Michael F.; Wong, George N.; Wu, Qingwen; Yamaguchi, Paul; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, Andre; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhang, Shuo; Zhao, Guang-Yao; Zhao, Shan-Shan; Chang, Dominic O.; Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration., In this paper we quantify the temporal variability and image morphology of the horizon-scale emission from Sgr A*, as observed by the EHT in 2017 April at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. We find that the Sgr A* data exhibit variability that exceeds what can be explained by the uncertainties in the data or by the effects of interstellar scattering. The magnitude of this variability can be a substantial fraction of the correlated flux density, reaching ∼100% on some baselines. Through an exploration of simple geometric source models, we demonstrate that ring-like morphologies provide better fits to the Sgr A* data than do other morphologies with comparable complexity. We develop two strategies for fitting static geometric ring models to the time-variable Sgr A* data; one strategy fits models to short segments of data over which the source is static and averages these independent fits, while the other fits models to the full data set using a parametric model for the structural variability power spectrum around the average source structure. Both geometric modeling and image-domain feature extraction techniques determine the ring diameter to be 51.8 ± 2.3 μas (68% credible intervals), with the ring thickness constrained to have an FWHM between ∼30% and 50% of the ring diameter. To bring the diameter measurements to a common physical scale, we calibrate them using synthetic data generated from GRMHD simulations. This calibration constrains the angular size of the gravitational radius to be ${4.8}_{-0.7}^{+1.4}$ μas, which we combine with an independent distance measurement from maser parallaxes to determine the mass of Sgr A* to be ${4.0}_{-0.6}^{+1.1}\times {10}^{6}$ M⊙. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., 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) and Fondecyt 1221421, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; 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 Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (although the opinions expressed in this work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of these Foundations); Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the China Scholarship Council; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation fellowship (2020M671266); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356); the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), 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 IN112417 and IN112820); the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and grant OCENW.KLEIN.113; 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); the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements RadioNet (No 730562) and M2FINDERS (No 101018682); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; 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 Institute for Advanced Study; 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; DFG research grant "Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond" (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1); Joint Princeton/Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships, 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 Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; 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); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6; 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-003-007-MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, and 110-2923-M-001-001); 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 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A 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 Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-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-1716536, OISE-1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1935980, AST-2034306); 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); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, Brain Pool Program: 2019H1D3A1A01102564, Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721, 2021R1A6A3A01086420, 2022R1C1C1005255); Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellowships; 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 Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grants PGC2018-098915-B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, PID2019-108995GB-C21, PID2020-117404GB-C21); the University of Pretoria for financial aid in the provision of the new Cluster Server nodes and SuperMicro (USA) for a SEEDING GRANT approved towards these nodes in 2020; the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2021-013); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017- 0709); 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 Toray Science Foundation; Swedish Research Council (VR); 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. 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 is 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 carried out using resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Additional work used ABACUS2.0, which is part of the eScience center at Southern Denmark University. 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 Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca).

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.--Full list of authors: Satapathy, Kaushik; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Özel, Feryal; Medeiros, Lia; Dougall, Sean T.; Chan, Chi-Kwan; Wielgus, Maciek; Prather, Ben S.; Wong, George N.; Gammie, Charles F.; Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Algaba, Juan Carlos; Anantua, Richard; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Baloković, Mislav; Barrett, John; Benson, Bradford A.; Bintley, Dan; Blackburn, Lindy; Blundell, Raymond; Boland, Wilfred; Bouman, Katherine L.; Bower, Geoffrey C.; Boyce, Hope; Bremer, Michael; Brinkerink, Christiaan D.; Brissenden, Roger; Britzen, Silke; Broderick, Avery E.; Broguiere, Dominique; Bronzwaer, Thomas; Bustamente, Sandra; Byun, Do-Young; Carlstrom, John E.; Chael, Andrew; Chatterjee, Koushik; Chatterjee, Shami; Chen, Ming-Tang; Chen, Yongjun; Cho, Ilje; Christian, Pierre; Conway, John E.; Cordes, James M.; Crawford, Thomas M.; Crew, Geoffrey B.; Cruz-Osorio, Alejandro; Cui, Yuzhu; Davelaar, Jordy; De Laurentis, Mariafelicia; Deane, Roger; Dempsey, Jessica; Desvignes, Gregory; Dexter, Jason; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Eatough, Ralph P.; Falcke, Heino; Farah, Joseph; Fish, Vincent L.; Fomalont, Ed; Ford, H. Alyson; Fraga-Encinas, Raquel; Friberg, Per; Fromm, Christian M.; Fuentes, Antonio; Galison, Peter; García, Roberto; Gentaz, Olivier; Georgiev, Boris; Goddi, Ciriaco; Gold, Roman; Gómez-Ruiz, Arturo I.; Gómez, José L.; Gu, Minfeng; Gurwell, Mark; Hada, Kazuhiro; Haggard, Daryl; Hecht, Michael H.; Hesper, Ronald; Ho, Luis C.; Ho, Paul; Honma, Mareki; Huang, Chih-Wei L.; Huang, Lei; Hughes, David H.; Ikeda, Shiro; Inoue, Makoto; Issaoun, Sara; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Janssen, Michael; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Sang-Sung; Levis, Aviad; Li, Yan-Rong; Li, Zhiyuan; Lindqvist, Michael; Lico, Rocco; Lindahl, Greg; Liu, Jun; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Loinard, Laurent; Lonsdale, Colin; Lu, Ru-Sen; MacDonald, Nicholas R.; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Martí-Vidal, Iván; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Menten, Karl M.; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Moriyama, Kotaro; Moscibrodzka, Monika; Müller, Cornelia; Mejías, Alejandro Mus; Musoke, Gibwa; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Héctor; Ortiz-León, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Park, Jongho; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pesce, Dominic W.; Piétu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Pötzl, Felix M.; Preciado-López, Jorge A.; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Rose, Mel; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sánchez, Salvador; Sánchez-Arguelles, David; Sasada, Mahito; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tiede, Paul; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Toma, Kenji; Torne, Pablo; Traianou, Efthalia; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wiik, Kaj; Wu, Qingwen; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, André; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhao, Guang-Yao; Zhao, Shan-Shan., The black hole images obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) are expected to be variable at the dynamical timescale near their horizons. For the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, this timescale (5–61 days) is comparable to the 6 day extent of the 2017 EHT observations. Closure phases along baseline triangles are robust interferometric observables that are sensitive to the expected structural changes of the images but are free of station-based atmospheric and instrumental errors. We explored the day-to-day variability in closure-phase measurements on all six linearly independent nontrivial baseline triangles that can be formed from the 2017 observations. We showed that three triangles exhibit very low day-to-day variability, with a dispersion of ∼3°–5°. The only triangles that exhibit substantially higher variability (∼90°–180°) are the ones with baselines that cross the visibility amplitude minima on the u–v plane, as expected from theoretical modeling. We used two sets of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations to explore the dependence of the predicted variability on various black hole and accretion-flow parameters. We found that changing the magnetic field configuration, electron temperature model, or black hole spin has a marginal effect on the model consistency with the observed level of variability. On the other hand, the most discriminating image characteristic of models is the fractional width of the bright ring of emission. Models that best reproduce the observed small level of variability are characterized by thin ring-like images with structures dominated by gravitational lensing effects and thus least affected by turbulence in the accreting plasmas. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., This work was supported, in part, by the NSF PIRE award 1743747 and NASA ATP award 80NSSC20K0521. L.M. acknowledges support from an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award No. AST-1903847. M.W. acknowledges the support of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Harvard University. All ray tracing calculations for Set A were performed with the El Gato GPU cluster at the University of Arizona that is funded by NSF award 1228509. All analyses for Set B were performed on CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. The EHT Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, and 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, Chile via NCN19058 (TITANs) and Fondecyt 3190878; the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; 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 black hole Initiative at Harvard University, through a grant (60477) from the John Templeton Foundation; the China Scholarship Council; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, and 263356); 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 (projects IN112417 and IN112820); the European Research Council Synergy Grant "BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes" (grant 610058); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant GBMF-3561); the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; Joint Princeton/Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships; research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation; the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSW-SYS008, and 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, JP18K13594, JP18K03656, JP18H03721, 18K03709, 18H01245, and 25120007); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS). FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119- M-001-027, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, 107-2119-M-110-005, 108-2112-M-001-048, and 109-2124-M-001-005); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA; Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, and NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); the National Institute of Natural Sciences of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grants 2016YFA0400704 and 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF; grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST-1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST-1310896, AST-1555365, AST-1615796, AST-1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1903847, and AST-2034306); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11573051, 11633006, 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11933007, 11991052, and 11991053); a fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M671266); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752 and 2015- R1D1A1A01056807; the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561 and Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721); the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the New Scientific Frontiers with Precision Radio Interferometry Fellowship awarded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa; the 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 Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grants PGC2018-098915-B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, and PID2019-108995GB-C21); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017–0709); the Toray Science Foundation; the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); 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); the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 730562 RadioNet; ALMA North America Development Fund; the Academia Sinica; Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the GenT Program (Generalitat Valenciana) Project CIDEGENT/2018/021. 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. The simulations were performed in part on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, and on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart. This research was enabled, in part, by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca), and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). 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#2016.1.01154.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), MOST (Taiwan), the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and the 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. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the OSO (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, CAS, and the National Key R&D Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China. 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 in Pico Veleta, Spain is 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. The SPT is supported by the NSF through grant PLR-1248097. Partial support is also provided by the NSF Physics Frontier Center grant PHY-1125897 to the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Kavli Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant GBMF 947. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. 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 an open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research. 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, both from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018.