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[Music throughout]

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Have you ever wondered what it would
look like to fly around a black hole?

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So, what is happening here?

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This is a simulation of a flight around a
supermassive black hole surrounded
by a hot, glowing disk of gas.

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The thin inner circle is called the photon ring.
It’s an image produced by light that has orbited
the black hole one or more times before escaping.

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This oval, centered on the camera’s direction
of travel, shows the entire simulated sky.

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Camera position and orientation
relative to the black hole.

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For the camera, time slows compared
to that of a faraway observer.

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The camera is aiming for the photon ring’s far side.
It’s now moving so fast that the simulation slows
for a better view.

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The camera’s speed causes light sources
directly ahead to brighten greatly.

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The camera, now moving at 60%
the speed of light, makes its closest
approach to the black hole.

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The starry sky distorts and appears as
mulitple, sometimes mirrored, images.

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This is caused by light making multiple orbits
of the black hole before reaching the camera.

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Now directly behind the camera, the black hole
appears split in this all-sky view.

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A closer view shows just how layered
and intricate the photon ring is.

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Each band is a distorted image of the gas
disk layered between the background sky.

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Successive bands are thinner, produced by
photons that have taken an additional trip around
the black hole before reaching the camera.

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On a typical laptop, computing this simulation
would have taken more than a decade.

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The Discover supercomputer at
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
performed the feat in 5 days ...

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... using only 0.3 percent of its processing power.

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NASA