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Show HN: Physically accurate black hole simulation using your iPhone camera

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313 points yunyu | 4 comments | 19 Nov 24 17:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.868s | source
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Y_Y ◴[19 Nov 24 17:23 UTC] No.42185918[source]▶
This is not a simulation of a black hole, but rather an image filter that emulates one particular effect.
replies(2): >>42186041 #>>42186195 #
lupsasca ◴[19 Nov 24 17:34 UTC] No.42186041[source]▶
Yes, agreed. We thought it would be fair to call it a "simulation" of what your surroundings would look like if a black hole were within your FOV, but as you say we do not take into account all effects (time delays in particular would require a lot of buffering and we decided this would be impractical to implement, and not that illuminating).
replies(2): >>42186144 #>>42186317 #
hnuser123456 ◴[19 Nov 24 17:43 UTC] No.42186144[source]▶
This is still nice when there are so many artistic images of black holes that do not take such care to use known physics to create an accurate image. Well done all. Looking forward to seeing what BHEX sees.
replies(1): >>42186199 #
1. lupsasca ◴[19 Nov 24 17:47 UTC] No.42186199[source]▶
Glad to hear you're excited about BHEX---we are too!

If you want to read more about what it's going to do, I wrote a blog post about it on the mission website: https://www.blackholeexplorer.org/bhex-blog/lupsasca-stateme...

replies(1): >>42188748 #
2. hnuser123456 ◴[19 Nov 24 22:23 UTC] No.42188748[source]▶
Read all of it, only question I have is... napkin math, how much more resolution over EHT alone?
replies(1): >>42190396 #
3. lupsasca ◴[20 Nov 24 02:45 UTC] No.42190396[source]▶
About ~5x improvement. Recall that the resolution of an interferometric array is set by the distance between telescopes measured in units of the observation wavelength. BHEX will get a ~3x resolution improvement from the increased distance between the space satellite and our ground telescopes (for the EHT, the max telescope separation is limited by the diameter of the Earth) and another ~50% from the increased frequency of observations (going up from 230 to 320 GHz).

5x is actually a lot: we'll be able to resolve the "photon ring" of orbiting light around M87* and Sgr A* (the two black holes previously imaged by EHT at lower resolution) and likely see the "shadows" of another 6-8 black holes, with the possibility of estimating the mass of another ~20-30 sources.

replies(1): >>42193375 #
4. hnuser123456 ◴[20 Nov 24 12:35 UTC] No.42193375{3}[source]▶
That's absolutely awesome, thank you.