What you are looking at
The shadow
The black disc in the middle is the hole’s shadow. Light that comes this close never gets out. It looks about 2.6 times wider than the event horizon itself, because gravity bends the light passing by.
The glowing disk
Hot gas swirls around the hole before it falls in. The inner rings move faster than the outer ones, which is why the glow is drawn out into streaks.
The arc over the top
The arc above and below the shadow is the far side of the same disk. Gravity bends its light up and over the hole, so you can see what is behind it.
The thin bright ring
The fine line at the edge of the shadow is light that went almost all the way around the hole before escaping towards you.
One side is brighter
The side of the disk moving towards you looks brighter and whiter; the side moving away looks dimmer and warmer.
Bent stars
Stars behind the hole are stretched and shifted: its gravity works like a lens. Turn the view and watch them slide around the edge.
Games by the same rules
At Kutsik Games we make sports and science games where what happens on screen follows the laws of physics — a ball that curls because of how you struck it, a puck pulled by a planet.