Gravity at its limit
Fall into a black hole
Every pixel follows a ray of light as gravity bends it.
- Falling speed
- 19% of light
- Your clock
- 58.9 s per far-away minute
- Where you are
- Outside the last stable orbit
Drag the view to look around.
The event horizon is the boundary beyond which light cannot escape. Outside it, the photon sphere is where light can orbit on unstable circular paths. The innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) marks the inner edge of a thin disk for a non-spinning black hole; real disks are more complicated.
Hawking radiation is a theoretical quantum effect: black holes have a temperature and an extremely long evaporation time at astrophysical masses. The Event Horizon Telescope published its image of M87* in 2019 and Sagittarius A* in 2022. The bright ring is lensed emission around a dark shadow, not a photograph of the horizon itself.
Definitions
Schwarzschild Radius
rs = 2GM/c²
Event Horizon
Point of no return
Photon Sphere
Light orbit at 1.5× rs
ISCO
Innermost stable orbit
Hawking Temp
Thermal radiation
Accretion Disk
Orbiting matter ring