File:NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink (SVS14576 BHFlyBy 360 FINAL 1080).webm

English: This version is encoded to play as a 360 VR movie. It follows the trajectory of a simulated camera approaching and looping around a non-rotating supermassive black hole. The object's mass is 4.3 million Suns, equivalent to the black hole lying at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The orange structure surrounding the black hole represents the hot, glowing gas of its accretion disk, where infalling matter collects and slowly spirals inward. Interior to the disk is a thin set of photon rings, which are images of the disk produced by light that has orbited the black hole one or more times before reaching the camera. The camera completes two orbits before escaping back out to safety. During the journey, a variety of effects caused by the gravitationally warped space-time around the black hole and the camera's speed become increasingly apparent. Images of the disk and the background sky morph, duplicate, and even form mirror images. Structures in the direction of travel, at the center of the simulation, brighten greatly as speed increases. At 46 seconds, the camera makes its closest approach to the event horizon, reaching maximum velocity at 60% the speed of light.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman and B. PowellMusic: "Beautiful Awesome,” David Husband and James William Banbury [PRS], Universal Production MusicWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available.