Check out the new (2010) website Black hole with disk and jet

Falling Into a Black Hole

In which we fall into a black hole on a real free fall orbit. All distortions of images are real, both general relativistic from the gravitational bending of light, and special relativistic from the near light speed orbit.

The black hole belongs to a quadruple stellar system, a binary binary. The system is fictional, but plausible.

After you are done dying at the central singularity of the black hole, feel free to explore more about the Schwarzschild geometry, about wormholes, about the collapse of a black hole, and about Hawking radiation.

© 1997, 1998 Andrew Hamilton.

The URL of this site is http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/bh/.


Here’s the Black Hole icon Movie Index. For what’s New see site history.
Movie preview

View of the stellar system from afar. Approaching the black hole (89K GIF movie icon movie). Frame from orbit movie. Firing a probe while orbiting the black hole (95K GIF movie icon movie). Falling to the singularity. Falling to the singularity (217K GIF movie icon movie).

Clicking on the text link gives you the movie in normal size. Clicking on the image gives you a double-size version of the same movie (same resolution, same number of K, just twice as big on the screen).

For explanations of these movies, and more, advance
 Forward forward to Go!   Approaching the Black Hole.


Unless otherwise stated, clicking on images gives you enlarged versions thereof, which may be easier to view in a classroom environment. The enlarged images have the same resolution as the normal images.
GIF animations not working? Here’s some advice.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me at Andrew.Hamiltonàcolorado.edu.
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Falling Into a Black Hole: Index

  1. Approaching the Black Hole

  2. Orbiting the Black Hole

  3. Falling to the Singularity of the Black Hole

  4. Dive into the Black Hole

  5. More about the Schwarzschild Geometry

  6. White Holes and Wormholes

  7. Collapse of a Black Hole

  8. Charged Black Holes: The Reissner-Nordström Geometry

  9. The Extremal Reissner-Nordström Geometry

  10. Hawking Radiation

  11. Black Hole Quiz


 Forward Forward to Approaching the Black Hole

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 M84 STIS icon Other Relativity and Black Hole links

index | movie icon movies | approach | orbit | singularity | dive | Schwarzschild | wormhole | collapse | Hawking | quiz | home | links

since 19 March 1997.

Updated 27 Jan 2018