How to Understand What Black Holes Look Like

Caption notes

Before the first black-hole image was released, Veritasium used a simplified non-spinning model to explain why a dark region in an image is not simply the outline of an event horizon. Curved light paths give the shadow, photon orbits and accretion disk different apparent sizes and positions; light from behind the disk can reach the observer, while relativistic beaming affects the brightness of its two sides. Watch by asking where the light came from and how it reached us. The opening predictions about the forthcoming image and target reflect expectations at the time. The roughly 2.6-to-one scale discussed here belongs to the simplified model, not a direct measurement applicable to every black-hole image.