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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.
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Qt application / data files
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The application can be downloaded for Linux and Windows:
- Linux source files can be downloaded here (gzip-compressed tar-file, 912 kB, md5).
(Installation manual.)
- Windows executable can be downloaded here (zip-archive, 6.4 MB, 2013-03-05, md5).
(Installation manual.)
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, md5).
- Distortion array for the region below the horizon: array_inside.bin (binary data file, 128MB, md5).
- Integral psi_V as a function of temperature: psitemp.bin (binary data file, 2.1kB, md5).
- Color values Sigma_j: sigma.bin (binary data file, 3.1MB, md5).
- Hipparcos catalogue: hip.bin (binary data file, 2.8MB, md5).
- All these data files can also be downloaded as one single tar-file (262MB, md5).
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 situations. You should download the files before playing.
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The observer is rotating around the Schwarzschild black hole on the fixed radius rObs/rs = 5.0
(mp4, 15MB) |
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The observer quasistatically approaches the black hole.
(mp4, 6MB) |
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Free fall starting with zero velocity from rObs/rs = 5.0
(mp4, 7.4MB) |
- T. Müller, D. Weiskopf
Distortion of the stellar sky by a Schwarzschild black hole
American Journal of Physics 78, 204-214 (2010).
DOI: 10.1119/1.3258282
- Hipparcos:
- Colour:
- Images:
- others:
Table I: Alnilam has trigonometric parallax of 2.43 mas.
Visualisierungsinstitut der Universität Stuttgart (VISUS)
Allmandring 19
70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Email: Thomas.Muellervis.uni-stuttgart.de
Email: Daniel.Weiskopfvisus.uni-stuttgart.de
All contents copyright © 2010, Thomas Müller, Daniel Weiskopf
All rights reserved.
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