Schwarzschild Field

Drag to tilt and roll. Click to drop a star.

View

Viewing angle14°

Exposure1.00×

Particles16,000

Effects

Gravitational lensingLight from behind the hole bends around it. The far side of the disk arcs over the top and stars smear into rings. Doppler beamingGas moving toward you turns bright and blue. Gas moving away fades and reddens. Time dilationClocks slow near the horizon. Falling stars crawl, redden and fade before they vanish. Tidal stretchingGravity pulls hardest on the near side of a falling star, drawing it into a thread. Relativistic jetsPlasma launched along the spin axis at 0.92 c. Tilt toward 90° to look down the beam. Background starsA drifting starfield behind the hole.

Matter

Scale

Black hole mass

Schwarzschild radius: –
Shadow diameter: –
Photon sphere: –
Innermost orbit period: –
Clock at innermost orbit: –
Playback: –

The picture is the same at every mass. Only the physical scale changes.