 |
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Institut für Visualisierung und Interaktive Systeme |
|
Thomas Müller |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
... to be published in the American Journal of Physics ...
Distortion of the stellar sky by a Schwarzschild black hole
Thomas Müller, Daniel Weiskopf
The optical appearance of the stellar sky for an observer in the vicinity of a black hole is dominated by bending of light, frequency shift, and magnification caused by gravitational lensing and aberration. Due to the finite apperture of an observer's eye or a telescope, Fraunhofer diffraction has to be taken into account. Using todays high performance graphics hardware, we have developed a Qt application which enables the user to interactively explore the stellar sky in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole. For that, we determine what an observer, who can either move quasistatically around the black hole or follow a timelike radial geodesic, would actually see.
|
|
Qt application / necessary data files
|
|
|
|
|
The application can be downloaded for Linux and Windows:
- Linux source files can be downloaded here (gzip-compressed tar-file, 912 kB).
- Windows executable can be downloaded here (zip-archive, 6.7 MB).
The following data files have to be stored in the 'data' directory of the application:
- Distortion array for the region above the horizon: array_outside.bin (binary data file, 128MB).
- Distortion array for the region below the horizon: array_inside.bin (binary data file, 128MB).
- Integral psi_V as a function of temperature: psitemp.bin (binary data file, 2.1kB)
- Color values Sigma_j: sigma.bin (binary data file, 3.1MB)
- Hipparcos catalogue: hip.bin (binary data file, 2.8MB)
The Hipparcos catalogue was taken from CDS. The necessary data (right ascension, declination, etc.) was stored in the binary file (hip.bin).
- At least 300MB GPU memory.
- The Linux version needs the free Qt SDK which can be found here.
The application was tested with the graphics boards: NVidia GeForce 8600 GT, ATI Radeon HD 3800.
- ContourPlot of the integrated intensity I_V scaled by the maximum I_max
The following movies show some example situation. You should download the files before playing.
- Hipparcos:
- Colour:
- Images:
- others:
Visualisierungsinstitut der Universität Stuttgart (VISUS)
Nobelstrasse 15
70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Email: Thomas.Muellervis.uni-stuttgart.de
Email: Daniel.Weiskopfvisus.uni-stuttgart.de
All contents copyright © 2009, Thomas Müller, Daniel Weiskopf
All rights reserved.
|
|
|
| |
