Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk

What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a 4-million-solar-mass black hole, similar to the one at the center of our galaxy . The camera lies about 16 million kilometers from the black hole’s event horizon and is moving inward at 62% the speed of light . Thanks to gravity’s funhouse effects , the starry band of the Milky Way appears both as a compact loop at the top of this view and as a secondary image stretching across the bottom. Move the cursor over the image for additional explanations. Visualizations like this allow astronomers to explore black holes in ways not otherwise possible.