2023ApJ...950..117E

We study the capabilities of present and future radio very long baseline interferometry arrays to distinguish black holes from horizonless spacetimes. We consider an example of a horizonless spacetime, obtained by overspinning a regular black hole. Its image is distinct from the image of a Kerr spacetime due to a second set of photon rings interior to the shadow. These photon rings cannot be directly resolved by present and even next-generation Event Horizon Telescope arrays, but instead imprint themselves in horizon-scale images as excess central brightness relative to that of a black hole. We demonstrate that future arrays can decrease the upper bound on the central brightness depression by a factor of 10 and thereby detect such indirect imprints from non-Kerr spacetimes in reconstructed images.