The appearance of the black hole in Interstellar was not created arbitrarily. It was actually modeled using the real relativistic equations describing the path of light in the gravitational field of a super-massive black hole spinning at near the speed of light. As a result, it may be the most accurate depiction we have to date of what such an object might look like. Astrophysicist and gravity expert Kip Thorne collaborated with the visual effects team to produce new software specifically to model the equations and render the black hole. The appearance was initially somewhat unexpected, but Kip Thorne realized "Why, of course. That's what it would do."

I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist, but on a basic level, here's what's happening: The glowing accretion disk of plasma remains in a single plane as expected (there's no perpendicular ring), but some of the light from the back side of the disk is warped by the intense gravitational field, over the top and bottom of the black hole. Thus in the region just outside the black hole, you are actually seeing around to the back side of it.

Indeed, the discoveries made during the rendering process has even led (or will lead) to the publication of several scientific articles on gravitational lensing.

There's more detail, including a video with Kip Thorne describing the effect, here:

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

Filmmakers often use a technique called ray tracing to render light and reflections in images. “But ray-tracing software makes the generally reasonable assumption that light is traveling along straight paths,” says Eugénie von Tunzelmann, a CG supervisor at Double Negative. This was a whole other kind of physics. “We had to write a completely new renderer,” she says.

Von Tunzelmann tried a tricky demo. She generated a flat, multicolored ring—a stand-in for the accretion disk—and positioned it around their spinning black hole. Something very, very weird happened. “We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” Franklin says. “So rather than looking like Saturn's rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.”

That's what led Thorne to his “why, of course” moment when he first saw the final effect. The Double Negative team thought it must be a bug in the renderer. But Thorne realized that they had correctly modeled a phenomenon inherent in the math he'd supplied. //

For anyone interested in reading more: this is simply called a "gravitational lens" - the wikipedia-article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens – oezi Dec 9 '14 at 7:02

A different astronomy and space science
related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

No matter if you enjoy taking or just watching images of space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made their entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like. …

Searchable

To interact: Use the controls in the top left (or pinch) to zoom in and out of the image. Click (or touch) and drag your cursor to move around in the image.

NASA's Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019. A version without the rover contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels; a version with the rover contains nearly 650 million pixels. Both versions are composed of more than 1,000 images that were carefully assembled over the following months.

The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama and relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution panorama that includes the rover's deck and robotic arm.

NASAs Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Martian surface between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019.

The Curiosity team just released a 1.8-billion-pixel panorama that features "Glen Torridon," a region on the flanks of Mars' 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp.

A free online citizen science platform //

As more satellites are placed into orbit, they will become an increasing problem to astronomers on the ground. This long term project will photographically track the population growth of these satellites over time.

SpaceX and others plan to launch thousands of new satellites into low-Earth orbit, creating streaks that cut through astronomers’ images. Now educators at NASA are asking citizen scientists to help document the problem. //

Astronomers have been losing the fight against light pollution for decades. Increasingly powerful lights from streetlamps, sports complexes, businesses and homes reflect their radiation into the night sky, washing out the stars. Light pollution increases about two percent each year in both areas lit and the brightness of that light, according to a 2017 study.

A different astronomy and space science
related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

Astronomers are rediscovering how calculations made by the 'human computer' Elizabeth Williams contributed to the first observations of Pluto 90 years ago.

Spectacular new images taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Cerro Paranal in Chile, published today, reveal that red supergiant star Betelgeuse isn’t just dimming, but could also be changing shape.

The star in the constellation of Orion has been visibly dimming since late 2019, and now stands at just 36% of its normal brightness. Astronomers and experienced stargazers can easily see the difference, and it’s got them talking … about the chance of the star becoming a supernova.

Is the dimming associated with a change in Betelgeuse that could lead to the star “going supernova?” In that scenario, Betelgeuse’s explosion could mean it shines as bright as a full moon for a few months.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) recently took its first image, which happens to be the highest-resolution image of the surface of the Sun to date.

... or, well, maybe not for 100,000 years

Cueball has added together all the runtimes of the Star Wars movies (episodes I-IX) and then calculated the exact time at which a message sent to Voyager 1 will have that exact duration in light speed delay. He announces this information to Megan and Beret Guy only seconds before it occurs, allowing him to signal the moment by saying "Now!"
Megan expresses surprise that the event isn't being celebrated with fireworks. Judging by the fact that she doesn't look up from her book, her surprise is insincere. Beret Guy breaks into song with the New Year's traditional "Auld Lang Syne".

This comic highlights a coincidental relationship between the Star Wars Episodes and the NASA Space Probe "Voyager 1", which most likely no one else has thought about, but most likely fitting well with fans of both xkcd and Star Wars.

The first Star Wars episode was released on 25th May 1977 only four months before Voyager 1 was launched on 5th September 1977. The last episode was released more than 42.5 years later on 20th December 2019 only three weeks before this comic.

That is approximately 20.6 light hours away. With the recently released last episode the total viewing time of the nine episodes is 20.35 hours (not including the two spin-off movies Rogue One and Solo).

After almost 350 years, physicists have just arrived at a statistical solution for Newton's three-body problem – that is, the problem of figuring out how three similar objects or bodies are going to travel in space in a way that fits in with the laws of motion and gravity. //

The researchers behind the latest study describe the three-body problem as "arguably the oldest open question in astrophysics", and while they haven't completely cracked the case, they've gotten closer than most by finding a statistical formula that fits this open question in certain scenarios.
In particular, they looked at a couple of centuries of previous research that puts forward the following idea: in unstable, chaotic three-body systems, one of those bodies eventually gets expelled, leaving behind a stable binary relationship between the two that are left. //

The three laws of motion laid down by Isaac Newton in 1687 are these: that objects remain in a state of inertia unless acted upon by force, that the relationship between acceleration and applied force is force equals mass times acceleration (F=ma), and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

So far so brilliant, as far as the basic physics of the Universe are concerned. But Newton ran into difficulties applying his rules to the Earth, Moon and Sun – the original three bodies. It actually became much harder to track three bodies with these mathematical rules.
While scientists have found fixes for special cases, a general formula for the three-body problem has proved elusive. It's like trying to apply a mathematical template to the butterfly effect – it's just too chaotic to track.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped the surface of a pulsar in detail. And the result challenges our textbook picture of a pulsar’s appearance. //

From its perch on the exterior of the International Space Station, the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER, looks for X-rays from extreme astronomical objects, such as pulsars //

Pulsars, like black holes, are extremely dense but extremely small objects. Their immense gravity bends space-time around them, giving us a glimpse at the far side of the pulsar, even as they rotate out of view. The effect also makes the pulsar appear slightly larger than its actual size. Because NICER can clock the arrival of X-rays from the pulsar with extreme precision (better than 100 nanoseconds ), the researchers were able to build a map of the star’s surface and measure its size with unprecedented accuracy.

The teams determined that the neutron star is between 1.3 and 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. And it is roughly 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide. (By contrast, our Sun stretches just over 864,000 miles [1.3 million km] across.) //

J0030’s is oriented with its northern hemisphere pointed toward Earth. So, the teams expected to see a hotspot near the north pole. Mapping the hotspots required supercomputer modeling to disentangle where the X-rays NICER received from the pulsar originated on the star’s surface. The task would have taken normal desktop computers about a decade to complete, but the supercomputers finished in less than a month. //

What the teams found presented a different picture: J0030 has two or three hotspots, all in the southern hemisphere. The University of Amsterdam team believes the pulsar has one small, circular spot and one thin, crescent-shaped spot spinning around its lower latitudes. The University of Maryland team found the X-rays could alternatively be coming from two oval spots in the southern hemisphere, as well as one cooler spot close to the star’s south pole.

Neither result is the simple picture astronomers expected, indicating that the pulsar’s magnetic field, which causes the hotspots, is likely even more complex than originally assumed. While the result certainly leaves astronomers wondering, “It tells us NICER is on the right path to help us answer an enduring question in astrophysics: What form does matter take in the ultra-dense cores of neutron stars?” NICER science lead and study co-author Zaven Arzoumanian said in a press release.

We just can’t catch a break. The Geminid meteor shower will peak around the mornings of December 13 and 14, 2019, though under the light of a bright waning gibbous moon.

Oh my, this recently discovered black hole... well, it’s big. //

Among black holes whose masses scientists can directly infer based on the motion of their host galaxies’ stars, it’s the biggest. It’s 40 billion times the mass of the Sun big—that’s around 2.5 percent the mass of the entire Milky Way galaxy. //

By watching the motions of the stars, scientists can relate the stellar velocity to the mass of the object that the stars are orbiting—revealing the 40-billion-solar-mass black hole at the center. This is the largest black hole mass calculated using this method so far, according to the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. It’s twice as large as the last record holders and 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. //

The discovery of ultra-heavy black holes is still limited by today’s observational capabilities, since scientists must be able to resolve the motion of objects in the host galaxies. Larger black holes probably reside beyond the realm of today’s telescopes.