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A sampling of research-related images and animations...

Three all-sky views of a thin accretion disk with hot spots around a rotating black hole (a=0.998), as seen by an observer corotating with the disk.

As above, but for a fixed observer; note the extreme distortions (due to frame dragging) in the view nearest the horizon.

Views of Black Holes: The Movie

This is a series of MPEG animations from a hypothetical research expedition to the above system.
NOTE: the average size of these movies is 3 MB each.

• In Episode I, the crew observes from high above the disk as the black hole is spun up and spun down. The inner edge of the disk approaches the horizon in the rapidly-rotating case, obscuring the initially-visible lensed images.
• In Episode II, they descend into the disk plane, then watch as the hole is again spun up and spun down.
• In Episode III, a tethered probe is slowly lowered towards a non-rotating black hole, then pulled back to a safe viewing distance just before it crosses the horizon, where the lensed images can be observed in detail.
• In Episode IV, a probe is released and allowed to free-fall into a rapidly rotating hole. Here we show the trip as recorded by the probe itself.
• In Episode V, the previous trip is reshown on the basis of the real-time telemetry received by the distant crew; to them, the probe appears to perpetually hover just outside the horizon.
• In Episode VI, a probe caught in the flow of the accreting disk gas slowly spirals into oblivion; shown is a time-lapse movie as recorded by the probe.