Black Hole Week 2024 Poster and Media

In this movie-style poster, the viewer gets the feeling of being on a precipice, teetering just on the edge of a black hole’s event horizon. The event horizon isn’t a solid surface like Earth’s or even the Sun’s. It's the boundary where the black hole's escape velocity equals the speed of light, the speed limit of the universe. Once matter crosses the event horizon, it will never escape the black hole.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

Visual description: This minimalist movie-style poster is dominated by a red-orange background dotted with stars. The title, “On the Brink,” is in the upper-left corner. The subtitle at the lower left reads “Meet Me at the Event Horizon.” The NASA insignia is in the upper right corner. At the center, a large black circle represents a black hole. Surrounding it are white lines, which are a stylized depiction of the black hole’s accretion disk as it appears to a distant viewer. Foreground lines arc in front of the black hole, as we would expect. However, the lines for the far side of the disk are visible above and below the black hole, instead of being blocked by it. This is due to the black hole’s gravity, which warps space-time and redirects the light on its path to us. A pocket watch in the lower right appears to be melting toward the black hole, evoking a feeling of spaghettification, an effect that happens to objects that get too close to a black hole.

In this movie-style poster, the viewer gets the feeling of being on a precipice, teetering just on the edge of a black hole’s event horizon. The event horizon isn’t a solid surface like Earth’s or even the Sun’s. It's the boundary where the black hole's escape velocity equals the speed of light, the speed limit of the universe. Once matter crosses the event horizon, it will never escape the black hole.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

Visual description: This minimalist movie-style poster is dominated by a red-orange background dotted with stars. The title, “On the Brink,” is in the upper-left corner. The subtitle at the lower left reads “Meet Me at the Event Horizon.” The NASA insignia is in the upper right corner. At the center, a large black circle represents a black hole. Surrounding it are white lines, which are a stylized depiction of the black hole’s accretion disk as it appears to a distant viewer. Foreground lines arc in front of the black hole, as we would expect. However, the lines for the far side of the disk are visible above and below the black hole, instead of being blocked by it. This is due to the black hole’s gravity, which warps space-time and redirects the light on its path to us. A pocket watch in the lower right appears to be melting toward the black hole, evoking a feeling of spaghettification, an effect that happens to objects that get too close to a black hole.

Vertically-formated teaser video using poster design elements.

Music: "Sorceror's Dream" from Universal Production Music

Complete transcript available.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

On the Brink Wallpaper

In this wallpaper based on the movie-style poster, the viewer gets the feeling of being on a precipice, teetering just on the edge of a black hole’s event horizon. The event horizon isn’t a solid surface like Earth’s or even the Sun’s. It's the boundary where the black hole's escape velocity equals the speed of light, the speed limit of the universe. Once matter crosses the event horizon, it will never escape the black hole.

Download the desktop version here.

Download the smartphone version here.

Download the square version here.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab