Event horizon telescope paper7/22/2023 #HighLife black hole (left) #RealBlackHole (right). You wouldn't want to be trapped on a spaceship hurtling into this: Maybe the closest that movie magic has gotten to the M87 black hole is High Life, whose director Claire Denis consulted astrophysicist and "Cosmic Companion" Aurelien Barreau to come up with something eerily close. Every single one of those black holes appears to be bright all around, which is not how an observer from a spaceship would see them. This sheds light on what is missing from all those movie images. It appears darker on the far end because the light on the far end is focusing away from you. More of its light is focused on you on the near end, so it looks brighter. Something coming at you at the speed of light is going to appear brighter-that's relativistic beaming. The black hole in the center of M87 spins rapidly. Check Fig 12, with renderings of shadows for disks at different angles /J083Ajv6ZD- Katie Mack April 10, 2019So why is the M87 image fading on the far end? Keep in mind that what you’re seeing here is not the actual black hole. The darkness in the center is an effect of the invisible black hole’s gravity, or its “shadow.” Gravity bends light from the black hole’s immense accretion disc and sends it towards the observer while leaving a gap where the black hole lurks. Here's a paper talking about the history of black hole images, with a detailed discussion of what you should expect for the "shadow" image we've just seen.
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