Black Hole Dead Ahead
If you could get up close and personal with a black hole, there might not be much to see. You couldn’t observe the black hole itself, and instead would only glimpse its event horizon — a spherical boundary inside of which nothing can escape.
The black hole itself would sit at the event horizon’s center as a point of infinite density known as a singularity. The great amount of mass at this point would stretch the fabric of space-time, bending light coming from behind and creating a gravitational lens.
If you were at a distance of about 375 miles, a black hole 10 times the mass of the sun might appear like the above image. Light from the background Milky Way galaxy is highly distorted, revealing the location of the black hole.
Image: Ute Kraus, Physics education group Kraus, Universität Hildesheim, Space Time Travel, (background image of the milky way: Axel Mellinger)
