this is a black hole, worked out rather than drawn.

every pixel follows a ray of light backwards from your eye through curved space, using einstein's equations for a black hole that doesn't spin. nobody painted the dark circle, the thin bright ring around it, or the disk that seems to fold over the top and under the bottom. they all come out of the maths.

the disk is gas orbiting as fast as gravity lets it, heated by its own friction. its temperature comes from the standard thin disk model. the side coming towards you is brighter and bluer, the side going away dimmer and redder, and light from close in loses energy climbing out. there is no gas inside three times the horizon radius because nothing can orbit there for long. it falls in.

you are hovering, not falling. go closer and your clock slows down while the sky in front of you gets bluer and brighter. below one and a half times the horizon radius even light can't orbit, and the black hole fills more than half of everything you can see.

every black hole of this kind has the same shape. the size, the speed and the colour change with the mass and with how fast it eats. tap the name to switch.

your eyes adjust to the brightness here, like they would. the stars are there to show how light bends, not at their real brightness. the masses are measured ones: m87* from the event horizon telescope, sagittarius a* from stars orbiting it, cygnus x-1 from its companion star.

sepand