{ "id": 14818, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14818/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Plunge: Behind the Scenes Creating NASA's Black Hole Visualization", "description": "Behind the scenes video about the Black Hole visualization from 2024", "release_date": "2025-09-26T12:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2025-09-08T12:34:43.919742-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 1157744, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a014800/a014818/BTS intro V3 for THUMBNAIL2.jpg", "filename": "BTS intro V3 for THUMBNAIL2.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "", "width": 3840, "height": 2160, "pixels": 8294400 }, "main_video": { "id": 1157741, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a014800/a014818/14818_Plunge_BlackHoleViz_BTS_1080.mp4", "filename": "14818_Plunge_BlackHoleViz_BTS_1080.mp4", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 }, "main_credits": { "Produced by": [ { "name": "Scott Wiessinger", "employer": "eMITS" } ], "Videography": [ { "name": "Sophia Roberts", "employer": "eMITS" } ], "Visualizations by": [ { "name": "Jeremy Schnittman", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" } ] }, "progress": "Complete", "media_groups": [ { "id": 378848, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14818/#media_group_378848", "widget": "Basic text", "title": "Plunge into the story behind some of NASA’s most iconic black hole videos!", "caption": "", "description": "For Black Hole Week 2024, NASA released new visualizations showing flights around and into a black hole. These visually striking and scientifically accurate products resulted from months of work by a small team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led by astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman \r\n\r\nNow, a new video reveals the backstage story of how these visualizations came about.  \r\n\r\nSchnittman developed computer code that models a supermassive black hole, its accretion disk, and its space-warping effects. Using a technique called ray tracing, the code also incorporated a virtual camera that tracked every photon, or particle of light, reaching it back to its source. For these visualizations, Jeremy also moved this camera through space, increasing the level of difficulty.  \r\n\r\nOne set of visualizations sent the camera on a near-miss trajectory that looped around the black hole and escaped back into space. The other set plunged the camera straight into the black hole along the most direct path possible.  \r\n\r\nWhile his initial low-resolution test frames could be produced on a laptop computer, the final 8k versions required thousands of frames generated by a Goddard supercomputer called Discover. When played back in video form, the complete frame sets showed detailed views of familiar black hole features — as well as some Schnittman had never seen before.  \r\n\r\nNo project is without some last-minute drama, though. Some frames revealed unexpected issues in the code that the team had to rush to deal with as the May deadline for Black Hole Week 2024 approached.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 378737, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14818/#media_group_378737", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Watch the full behind-the-scenes video to learn how the team tackled these obstacles in time to produce these jaw-dropping videos.  \r\n\r\nCredit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center\r\n\r\nWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

\r\n\r\nView the final visualizations [here](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14576/){target=_blank}.\r\n\r\nFind a short, vertical clip from this video [here](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14793/){target=_blank}.\r\n\r\nMusic: \"Beautiful Awesome,” David Husband and James William Banbury [PRS], Universal Production Music\r\n“Games Show Sphere 01,” Anselm Kreuzer [GEMA], Universal Production Music\r\n“Rolling,” Jaremy Aiello and Mike Mullen [BMI], Universal Production Music\r\n“Question Time,” Paul Louis Reeves [PRS], Universal Production Music\r\n“Tactical Analysis,” Clinton Rusich, Matthew St Laurent, Christian Telford, and David Travis Edwards [ASCAP], Universal Production Music\r\n“Games Show Sphere 02,” Anselm Kreuzer [GEMA], Universal Production Music\r\n“Awakening Yearning,” David Ashok Ramani and Jonathan Elias [ASCAP], Universal Production Music\r\n“Tidal Force,” Thomas Daniel Bellingham [PRS], Universal Production Music\r\n\r\n

Complete transcript available.

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