Welcome to the Planetary Radio Interferometer Simulator. To photograph a supermassive black hole, we must link radio observatories across the globe using atomic clocks to create an Earth-sized synthetic aperture telescope.
1. Frame-Dragging (Spin)
Dial the Kerr Spin (a*) to see how the rotation of the black hole drags the fabric of spacetime, distorting the shadow from a perfect circle into a flattened "D" shape.
2. Doppler Beaming
Plasma in the accretion disk orbits near light speed. The material moving towards you appears intensely bright (blue-shifted), while receding material dims.
3. The (u,v) Plane
As Earth rotates, baseline pairs between observatories trace elliptical tracks in spatial frequency space. More tracks = higher resolution and cleaner image.
4. Clean Deconvolution
Sparse array coverage creates a "dirty beam" with blurry artifacts. Run the deconvolution algorithm to mathematically reconstruct the sharp photon ring.