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At the top of the article, is that real imagery or some sort of mock-up?

by sixothree 9y ago

stagbeetle 9y ago
Photograph by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Flickr
- davesque 9y ago
  But a black hole has literally never been imaged.
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    but this could be an image of the lack of image. there are a couple ways to take what you said, since "light isn't escaping" how about the event horizon then
    - davesque 9y ago
      No. There is literally no high-res image in existence of the lack of light effected by a black hole's event horizon. Any cool-looking picture of light apparently warping around some unseen object, gas jets shooting out of a black ball, or any other depiction of any fidelity is an artist's impression at this point. Currently, there is a project underway (http://eventhorizontelescope.org/ http://eventhorizontelescope.org/) coordinating the efforts of many different researchers with the goal of resolving the event horizon of a black hole. This project would only produce an image that most people would still call extremely blurry. But it would be the first legitimate image of the characteristic visual features of a black hole.
  - stagbeetle 9y ago
    You are correct, after doing some digging I found this caption: "An illustration of the supermassive black hole located in the middle of the very dense galaxy M60-UCD1. It weighs as much as 21 million times the mass of our Sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Coe, G. Bacon (STScI)" leading to: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1419a/ https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1419a/
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
Of course it's a mock-up. Black holes have never been imaged from up-close. Maybe the background is an actual photo, but not the thing in the middle. But it does seem to be a more or less realistic simulation of light ray distortion in the gravitational field of a black hole.
- sixothree 9y ago
  I thought NASA usually described these sorts of things as "artist depictions", and that maybe I had not been paying attention and some wonderful imagery had arisen.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    Oh, I see. You were looking at the attribution notice next to the photo in the article. It certainly refers to the background only. They should have explicitly said that. BHs are just too far away, and our instruments are not powerful enough (yet?) to image them at this kind of scale. If you watch Interstellar, the imagery in the movie (the giant black hole, and even the wormhole the characters use to travel far away) is actually a physically-realistic simulation of the behavior of light in black-hole-like gravity fields. Kip Thorne, one of the top scientists in the field of general relativity, has collaborated with the movie makers to ensure the special effects were as close as possible to what science tells us right now about these objects.
    - rpedela 9y ago
      Article which talks about the black hole simulation in Interstellar: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/ https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-blac...
  - notzorbo3 9y ago
    Basically non of the images you ever see from anything in outer space are real. It's always composite images or colored in or spectrum-shifted into our visible light range.

At the top of the article, is that real imagery or some sort of mock-up?

stagbeetle 9y ago

Photograph by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Flickr

davesque 9y ago
But a black hole has literally never been imaged.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  but this could be an image of the lack of image. there are a couple ways to take what you said, since "light isn't escaping" how about the event horizon then
  - davesque 9y ago
    No. There is literally no high-res image in existence of the lack of light effected by a black hole's event horizon. Any cool-looking picture of light apparently warping around some unseen object, gas jets shooting out of a black ball, or any other depiction of any fidelity is an artist's impression at this point. Currently, there is a project underway (http://eventhorizontelescope.org/ http://eventhorizontelescope.org/) coordinating the efforts of many different researchers with the goal of resolving the event horizon of a black hole. This project would only produce an image that most people would still call extremely blurry. But it would be the first legitimate image of the characteristic visual features of a black hole.
- stagbeetle 9y ago
  You are correct, after doing some digging I found this caption: "An illustration of the supermassive black hole located in the middle of the very dense galaxy M60-UCD1. It weighs as much as 21 million times the mass of our Sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Coe, G. Bacon (STScI)" leading to: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1419a/ https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1419a/

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

Of course it's a mock-up. Black holes have never been imaged from up-close. Maybe the background is an actual photo, but not the thing in the middle. But it does seem to be a more or less realistic simulation of light ray distortion in the gravitational field of a black hole.

sixothree 9y ago
I thought NASA usually described these sorts of things as "artist depictions", and that maybe I had not been paying attention and some wonderful imagery had arisen.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  Oh, I see. You were looking at the attribution notice next to the photo in the article. It certainly refers to the background only. They should have explicitly said that. BHs are just too far away, and our instruments are not powerful enough (yet?) to image them at this kind of scale. If you watch Interstellar, the imagery in the movie (the giant black hole, and even the wormhole the characters use to travel far away) is actually a physically-realistic simulation of the behavior of light in black-hole-like gravity fields. Kip Thorne, one of the top scientists in the field of general relativity, has collaborated with the movie makers to ensure the special effects were as close as possible to what science tells us right now about these objects.
  - rpedela 9y ago
    Article which talks about the black hole simulation in Interstellar: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/ https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-blac...
- notzorbo3 9y ago
  Basically non of the images you ever see from anything in outer space are real. It's always composite images or colored in or spectrum-shifted into our visible light range.