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arXiv:1502.03808gr-qc

Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and in the Movie Interstellar

Oliver James, Eugenie von Tunzelmann, Paul Franklin, Kip S. Thorne

Abstract

Interstellar is the first Hollywood movie to attempt depicting a black hole as it would actually be seen by somebody nearby. For this we developed a code called DNGR (Double Negative Gravitational Renderer) to solve the equations for ray-bundle (light-beam) propagation through the curved spacetime of a spinning (Kerr) black hole, and to render IMAX-quality, rapidly changing images. Our ray-bundle techniques were crucial for achieving IMAX-quality smoothness without flickering. This paper has four purposes: (i) To describe DNGR for physicists and CGI practitioners . (ii) To present the equations we use, when the camera is in arbitrary motion at an arbitrary location near a Kerr black hole, for mapping light sources to camera images via elliptical ray bundles. (iii) To describe new insights, from DNGR, into gravitational lensing when the camera is near the spinning black hole, rather than far away as in almost all prior studies. (iv) To describe how the images of the black hole Gargantua and its accretion disk, in the movie \emph{Interstellar}, were generated with DNGR. There are no new astrophysical insights in this accretion-disk section of the paper, but disk novices may find it pedagogically interesting, and movie buffs may find its discussions of Interstellar interesting.

arXiv comments
46 pages, 17 figures
Journal reference
Classical and Quantum Gravity 32 (2015) 065001
DOI
doi:10.1088/0264-9381/32/6/065001
Subjects
gr-qcGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmology astro-ph.HEHigh Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

On Hacker News

Linked by 6 identifiable commenters in 6 comments across 6 threads, from Sep 2018 to May 2026. Found in 5 HN submissions from Feb 2015 to Jun 2021. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments6 threads

  1. Archaeologists find Egyptian mummy buried with the 'Iliad' 1 comment

    • Well, interstellar has also some nerd stuff in it. If I remember correctly Kip Thorne did physics consulting on the movie and they even use a simulation running on a cluster to visualize the black hole physically correct. They could have used some arbitrary CGI…but no, they…

      SvenLView on HNParent context

  2. Show HN: Physically accurate black hole simulation using your iPhone camera 1 comment

    • The black hole simulation that was shown in the movie Interstellar is explained in detail in this paper, freely available on the arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808 As a physicist with a modest background in computing, I was also surprised by how powerful the iPhone GPU is.…

      lupsascaView on HNParent context

  3. Interstellar movie black hole implemented with Einstein's equations in C++ 1 comment

    • If you want to avoid opening Twitter (now known as X), here is the link to the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03808 TLDR “A typical IMAX image has 23 million pixels, and for Interstellar we had to generate many thousand images, so DNGR had to be very efficient. It has 40,000…

      NKosmatosView on HNParent context

  4. Unveiling the first-ever image of a black hole [video] 1 comment

    • Previous work on this was done for the movie Interstellar. The resolution of the rendering software was so high that team members were able to examine the black hole very closely - Because Gargantua was spinning at almost the speed of light, the rendering showed that spacetime…

      a_dView on HNParent context

  5. Rotating Black Holes May Serve as Gentle Portals for Hyperspace Travel 1 comment

    • > I'll use Isaac Arthur dismissal of FTL travel as to why what credentials does he have? > Put me firmly in the camp that believes the speed of light is a hard limit on the universe the speed of light isn't a limit in the sense that nothing can be greater than it. it is a…

      nikofeynView on HNParent context

  6. Raytracing a Black Hole 1 comment

    • On a related note, there's a paper by the Interstellar special effects team and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne describing how they rendered the black hole in the film and the tradeoffs they made: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808

      jonas21View on HNParent context

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