Black Hole Vision: An Interactive iOS Application for Visualizing Black Holes

TL;DR

Black Hole Vision is an iOS app that visualizes black hole lensing effects in real-time by simulating how light is bent around black holes, providing an interactive educational experience.

Contribution

The paper introduces an open-source iOS application that synthesizes black hole lensing images using real-time camera feeds and black hole physics equations, enhancing black hole visualization tools.

Findings

Real-time black hole lensing visualization on mobile devices

Implementation of Schwarzschild and Kerr black hole lensing equations

Open-source app available on the iOS App Store

Abstract

The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a proposed mission to launch a sub-millimeter radio telescope into Earth orbit that will take the sharpest images in the history of astronomy and reveal novel horizon-scale features of supermassive black holes. Black Hole Vision is an open-source application, freely available on the iOS App Store, that produces lensed images which highlight the key features expected to appear in the black hole images BHEX will capture. The app combines video feeds from the front- and rear-facing iPhone cameras and uses the black hole lensing equations to synthesize an onscreen image displaying the user's surroundings as if they were gravitationally lensed by a black hole within the cameras' field of view. Here, we describe how light rays are lensed by non-rotating (Schwarzschild) and rotating (Kerr) black holes, and we list the equations needed for computing black-hole-lensed images. We also describe their specific implementation within Black Hole Vision.