Einstein’s laws dictate that, as seen from afar, [...] Miller’s planet travels around Gargantua’s billion-kilometer-circumference orbit once each 1.7 hours. This is roughly half the speed of light! Because of time’s slowing, the Ranger’s crew measure an orbital period sixty thousand times smaller than this: a tenth of a second. Ten trips around Gargantua per second.
[...]
It seems likely, then, that if you look down the cylinder from Miller’s planet you will see Gargantua, and if you look up the cylinder you will see the external universe; so Gargantua should encompass roughly half of the sky (180 degrees) around the planet and the universe the other half. Indeed, that is what Einstein’s relativistic laws predict.
Kip Thorne, The Science of INTERSTELLAR
Half of Miller's world's sky would be pitch-black: Gargantua's event horizon. The other half would be a twisted view of the outside universe, with the accretion disk bent into two arcs of light: one encircling the horizon, and one arching overhead. The starfield would spin ten times a second. It would hardly look like a starfield at all; it would more closely resemble a long-exposure photo of the night sky on Earth. Everything in the sky - stars, nebulae, the accretion disk - would be stretched out into streaks of light instead of point sources or static images. Telescope-based astronomy would be impossible.
Lionheart wrote:It would have been some crazy imagery to be shown by Nolan
This is one of the incidents where Nolan specifically overrode Kip Thorne. He instead showed the sky as depicted below in order to A) not confuse the audience with strange imagery B) save the Gargantua close-up shots for the climax.
snow13 wrote:I have a question, how fast were they going arround gargantua when they slingshotted at the end ? Anyone have an answer pleas respond
I was thinking about that shot actually. Considering Kip's comments its obvious that the size proportionates between the planet and the blackhole are not right.
But its a fantastic composition , so its acceptable
A basic question about the sky in Interstellar once they arrive at the other side of the wormhole:
When Doyle says, "We're here..." and they show that wide shot of Endurance flying in the section of the universe on the far side of the wormhole (i.e. not the wormhole side by Saturn) - there are what appear to be nebulae and stars. Can anyone refresh my memory - in the film, do they explain where this part of the universe is located in proximity to our solar system? I believe it's another galaxy, but do they explain if it's one of the known galaxies that we have charted? Or, as a viewer, are we supposed to just think they're in "a" galaxy, and we don't know how far away it is, i.e. is it a galaxy that's near the edge of the known universe, is it somewhere in the middle, etc. In other words - do we know where Gargantua is located approximately in the known universe?
