Interstellar: The massive black hole Gargantua

3D ModelNoAI

The scene reproduces the voyage of the Endurance spacecraft through a wormhole to a planetary system in orbit around a very massive, rapidly spinning black hole, Gargantua. Endurance’s mission was to discover potentially habitable worlds and its journey is narrated in the sci-fi movie Interstellar by Christopher Nolan. Gargantua is an incredibly close representation of an actual black hole. The first ever image of a real black hole was shared by the Event Horizon Telescope’s team in 2019. This black hole is located at the heart of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. The two black holes differ in morphology because Gargantua was observed in a front view, whilst the M87 black hole was observed by us from close to its poles. Planetary systems orbiting black holes have been theorized but never discovered yet.

Credits: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo. Black hole image by NASA-GSFC/Jeremy Schnittman. Endurance model by tianer_2820.