Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This visualization takes you on a journey to a supermassive black hole with a 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun.
In this video a flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds the black hole and serves as a visual reference during the fall. Also visible are glowing structures called photon rings, which form closer to the black hole from light that has orbited it one or more times. A backdrop of the starry sky, as seen from Earth, completes the scene.
Scientists created the visualization using NASA supercomputers. The project generated about 10 terabytes of data — equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress.
Read more: science.nasa.gov/universe/black-holes/supermassive-black-holes/new-nasa-black-hole-visualization-takes-viewers-beyond-the-brink
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman and B. Powell
This visualization takes you on a journey to a supermassive black hole with a 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun.
In this video a flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds the black hole and serves as a visual reference during the fall. Also visible are glowing structures called photon rings, which form closer to the black hole from light that has orbited it one or more times. A backdrop of the starry sky, as seen from Earth, completes the scene.
Scientists created the visualization using NASA supercomputers. The project generated about 10 terabytes of data — equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress.
Read more: science.nasa.gov/universe/black-holes/supermassive-black-holes/new-nasa-black-hole-visualization-takes-viewers-beyond-the-brink
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman and B. Powell
