Science

How to Picture a Black Hole

This month, researchers are inaugurating the Event Horizon Telescope, a project that will try to take the first detailed pictures of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
  • Black Hole Dead Ahead
  • Central Black Hole
  • The Accretion Disk
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This month, researchers are inaugurating the Event Horizon Telescope, a project that will try to take the first detailed pictures of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. This observation would be a remarkable achievement, underscoring the progress that has been made in black-hole research in just the last few decades. As recently as the 1970s, astronomers still argued over whether black holes were theoretical constructs or real physical objects. They now have ample evidence that black holes are not only real, but abundant in the cosmos. Here on Earth, advanced computer simulations have given astronomers a wealth of information, leading theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech to suggest that black-hole research is entering a new golden age. “There is now a program of observations that I expect will bring us some big surprises and hopefully validate the predictions from these simulations,” he said. Yet it’s still strange to imagine what the area around a black hole looks like. After all, a black hole is an object from which nothing, including light, can escape. In this gallery, we look at some of the predictions that researchers have made about viewing a black hole. Above:

Black Hole Dead Ahead

If you could get up close and personal with a black hole, there might not be much to see. You couldn't observe the black hole itself, and instead would only glimpse its event horizon — a spherical boundary inside of which nothing can escape. The black hole itself would sit at the event horizon's center as a point of infinite density known as a singularity. The great amount of mass at this point would stretch the fabric of space-time, bending light coming from behind and creating a gravitational lens. If you were at a distance of about 375 miles, a black hole 10 times the mass of the sun might appear like the above image. Light from the background Milky Way galaxy is highly distorted, revealing the location of the black hole. Image: Ute Kraus, Physics education group Kraus, Universität Hildesheim, Space Time Travel, (background image of the milky way: Axel Mellinger)