Can Light Orbit A Black Hole? The Physics Explained
Black holes are objects, which even light cannot escape from. More precisely, light cannot escape from inside a black hole. However, could light orbit a black hole outside of it?
Light can orbit a black hole. However, this is possible at exactly one radii, the innermost bound circular orbit (IBCO). The only possible orbit for light is therefore an unstable circular orbit. The possible orbital planes of light at the IBCO form a sphere around the black hole called the photon sphere.
In this article, we’ll be going over exactly what the IBCO and the photon sphere are and why these are the only possible orbits for light.
We’ll also look at how exactly general relativity (the theory needed for understanding and describing black holes) predicts how light moves around a black hole.
We’ll discover that there are exactly three possible types of trajectories a light ray can take near a black hole.
There are also plenty of other interesting phenomena related to orbits of light around a black hole, which will all be explained as you read further.
If the content of this article seems interesting, you may also enjoy my article on black hole orbits. This is a complete guide on everything you’d want to know about possible orbits around black holes (which are fascinatingly more interesting than typical planetary orbits) and how different types of black holes (electrically charged and spinning) affect these orbits.
In case you’re interested, you can also get this article (and my other general relativity articles) in downloadable PDF form here.
Table of Contents
How Light Moves Around a Black Hole (According To General Relativity)
Around a black hole, light moves along null geodesics. These are trajectories through spacetime that have a total length of exactly zero. Around a black hole and along these null geodesics, light can trace out parabolic trajectories, circular orbits or trajectories that end up spiraling into the black hole.
Before we can understand what these null geodesics are, we need to take a step back and understand where exactly these concepts come from in the first place.
First of all, black holes are described by Einstein’s general relativity and so is the motion of objects around black holes.
Everything we’re going to discuss in this section about general relativity is covered in much greater detail in my introductory article on general relativity. The article is aimed at beginners who wish to learn the depths of the mathematics and physics of general relativity (without requiring much previous knowledge).
Now, in general relativity, all the physics that happens will take place in spacetime. You can think of spacetime as essentially just combining both space and time into a single description of events.
How objects move in spacetime will depend on the geometry of the spacetime. The big idea behind general relativity is that the energy content (such as mass) in a particular spacetime dictates how the geometry of that spacetime gets “curved”.
The effects of this curvature of spacetime are then observed as gravity. This means that objects under the influence of gravity move along the geometric structure of spacetime and the paths these objects trace out are called geodesics.

The key idea summarized is therefore that objects under the influence of gravity will naturally move along geodesics through spacetime.
Now, this idea applies to black holes and light as well; light moves along a geodesic under the influence of the gravity of a black hole.
These specific geodesics through spacetime that only light (or other massless particles) can move along are called null geodesics.
You’ll find a detailed explanation of what these null geodesics are down below, however, the key point here is that light always moves on null geodesics, around a black hole as well.
Now, if you’re wondering how light or photons can be affected by gravity, even though they are massless, I suggest reading this article. In there, I cover exactly this issue.
Now, how do these null geodesics actually look like around a black hole? In other words, what are the actual trajectories in space that a light ray or a photon will move along near a black hole?
The answer to this comes from looking at the so-called effective potential for a photon (light of course being made out of photons).
The formula describing this is as follows:

The useful thing about the effective potential is that it allows us to visualize orbital motion by simply looking at the graph of the potential, which in this case, looks as follows:

The key idea in visualizing orbits using this is that we essentially imagine this potential graph as being a hill, which the orbiting particle rolls along just like a ball would roll on a hill. I discuss this concept in more detail and how it applies to different potentials in my guide to black hole orbits.
This then allows us to see how the radius r changes as the particle moves in this potential (“rolls along the hill”). This essentially gives us a visual picture of how the orbit will look like without having to solve a single equation!
In this case, we’ll look at a photon that comes in from a large radius from somewhere (so all the way from the right side of the graph).
The energy of the photon (essentially its initial velocity) will determine at what “height” on the hill the photon can climb up to. We essentially have three cases:
- The energy of the photon is too low to get close to the black hole; the photon will simply come in, get deflected and fly out again.
- The energy of the photon is exactly perfect to remain at the maximum of the potential; the photon will stay at a constant radius in an unstable circular orbit.
- The energy of the photon is too high; the photon will come in, cross the peak of the potential and spiral into the black hole.
Let’s see how the first case looks like on our potential graph:

Based on this, we can visualize how the actual physical orbit in space will look like (note that this graph only tells us the behavior of the radius of the orbit, but the photon’s orbital angle will also change).
In this case, we have something called a parabolic orbit (as it kind of looks like a parabola):

In the second case, the energy of the photon is just right so that it is able to “climb up” to this peak and stay there:

This corresponds to a circular orbit around the black hole (since the photon is staying at the same radius at the peak and a circle, of course, is defined by having a constant radius):

Later in this article, we’ll derive the actual value of this radius from the effective potential. I’ll also discuss some very interesting possibilities of stable circular orbits for light.
Anyway, the third possible orbit is one where the energy is too high, such that the photon is able to “climb over” this potential peak and thus, fall into the black hole:

This corresponds to a physical orbital trajectory where the photon spirals into the black hole:

These three types of orbits encompass all the possible trajectory types that light can move in around a (Schwarzschild) black hole.
In the next section, we’ll dive deeper into orbits of light around a black hole, specifically bound orbits. I’ll also explain what the IBCO (the photon sphere) really is and where it comes from.
Quick tip: Learning general relativity and its applications is very difficult without first building a solid understanding of the mathematics nearly all of general relativity is built upon. For this purpose exactly, I’ve created my own Mathematics of General Relativity: A Complete Course (link to find out more).
This course is ideal for beginners (for both self-studying and students) who want to get deeper into general relativity and actually learn it at a deeper level, but don’t know exactly where to start. You will learn everything you need to know about tensors, differential geometry and many more crucial topics through clear and concise explanations and LOTS of practical examples.
The Photon Sphere Explained
Bound orbits are orbits in which a particle essentially stays in orbit without escaping. For light around a black hole, these bound orbits are particularly simple. But where exactly does light orbit a black hole?
Light orbits a black hole at the photon sphere, which occurs at a distance of 1.5 Schwarzschild radii from the black hole. The photon sphere is the only possible radius at which a particle moving with exactly the speed of light, such as a photon, can orbit at.
Let’s think about why this is exactly. A circular orbit is characterized by a constant orbital radius (as we’d expect for a circle) and also a constant orbital velocity.
In other words, any particle orbiting in a circular orbit maintains the exact same velocity throughout its orbital period.
But, the same can be said in a different way; any particle moving at a constant velocity can only be in a circular orbit. Since a photon always moves at the speed of light, it can only have a circular orbit around a black hole.
The constant radius at which this circular orbit occurs at is 1.5 Schwarzschild radii and it is referred to as the innermost bound circular orbit (IBCO). We’ll discuss the exact value of this radius and what it means soon.
This name comes from the fact that this orbit is the closest possible circular orbit that any particle could have, since orbiting at this radius requires moving at the speed of light.
An orbit any closer to the black hole would require moving at a speed greater than the speed of light, which isn’t possible. Therefore, any orbital trajectory that crosses the IBCO will fall into the black hole (as we discussed earlier).
Now, the circular orbits for light always occur in a plane. But this orbital plane can be at any angle, so really, the possible circular orbits of light form a sphere around the black hole (the radius of the sphere being 1.5 rs). This is called the photon sphere.

But where exactly does this value of 1.5 Schwarzschild radii come from? And what is the Schwarzschild radius anyway? This is what we’ll look at next.
How To Find The Radius of The Photon Sphere (Step-By-Step Derivation)
The radius of the photon sphere can be found from the extremal points in the effective potential function for a photon in the Schwarzschild spacetime. In particular, the radius of the photon sphere occurs at the maximum of the potential, which can be calculated by differentiating the potential function.
The full mathematical derivation of this can be found down below. The answer (not very surprisingly by now) is exactly 3rs/2 (i.e. 1.5 rs).
In terms of visualizing this from the potential graph, the picture is quite simple:

There is, however, one more thing to explain and that is the Schwarzschild radius. The Schwarzschild radius is simply a distance scale associated with a black hole.
The Schwarzschild radius therefore gives a neat way to express distances (radii) around a black hole in a consistent way.
We can express any radius by indicating how many Schwarzschild radii this radius is away from the black hole (for example, the IBCO or the photon sphere lies at 1.5 rs).
In terms of the physical meaning of the Schwarzschild radius, it corresponds to the event horizon of the black hole (” the point of no return”). The event horizon is located at exactly rs.
The Schwarzschild radius depends on the mass of the black hole (M) and can be calculated as follows:
Here, c is the speed of light and G is the gravitational constant (both constants of nature). In Newtonian gravity, the escape velocity of a massive body (the velocity needed to escape the gravitational pull of the massive body) is vesc=√(2GM/r), so the Schwarzschild radius has the nice interpretation of being the radius at which the escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light (by setting vesc=c and solving for r), which of course defines the event horizon of a black hole.
Is The Photon Sphere Stable?
The photon sphere is not stable. This is because the photon sphere occurs at the maximum of the effective potential for a photon orbiting a black hole. Maxima of the effective potential always correspond to unstable orbits, meaning that all orbits at the photon sphere are unstable.
Since the photon sphere is also the only possible circular orbit for light, this means that light can only have an unstable circular orbit.
In contrast, a massive particle would be able to have both a stable and an unstable circular orbit.
Now, to understand why the photon sphere really corresponds to an unstable orbit, we’ll need to understand what actually makes an orbit unstable.
An orbit is always unstable if it occurs at a maximum of the effective potential. This is because any slight perturbation to an orbit at the maximum of the potential will cause the particle to permanently fall to a lower value of the potential, indicating that the orbit is unstable.
We can understand this quite intuitively from the effective potential graph (through our “ball rolling on a hill” -analogy):

Mathematically, the stability of orbits can be analyzed by looking at the second derivative of the effective potential. In particular, if the second derivative is negative, then the orbit is unstable and if it’s positive, the orbit is stable.
This is because second derivatives naturally describe the concavity of a function’s graph.
The second derivative being negative corresponds to the graph being concave down, which means that if at an extremal point (which, in our case, corresponds to a circular orbit), the second derivative is negative, the point must be a maximum (which is an unstable point).
So, the condition for an unstable orbit is therefore:
You’ll find a proof down below for why the photon sphere is unstable using exactly this condition.
Could Light Enter a Stable Orbit Around a Black Hole?
Light cannot enter a stable orbit around a black hole as the only possible orbit for light is an unstable circular orbit. However, around an extremal charged black hole, there could theoretically exist a possible stable circular orbit for light at exactly the event horizon.
Now, first of all, what is an extremal charged black hole? Simply put, this is an electrically charged black with the maximum charge-to-mass ratio allowed by general relativity (in other words, for a given black hole mass, its electric charge is as big as possible for that given mass).
The interesting thing is that even though a photon is an electrically neutral particle (it isn’t affected by the electric forces created by the black hole), the electric field of the black hole’s charge itself causes an additional gravitational effect on the photon.
The idea behind this is that the black hole’s electric field contains energy and therefore, it will cause some curvature in the geometry of spacetime.
This is then seen as an additional “gravitational force” that would not exist around an uncharged black hole. I discuss this and a lot more about orbits around charged black holes in my guide on black hole orbits.
Now, this additional gravitational effect can be seen in the effective potential for a photon around a charged black hole (the spacetime around a charged black hole is called the Reissner-Nordström spacetime):
Schematically, the effective potential has the following form (here I’ve set all the parameters equal to 1 except the electric charge of the black hole, Q, to clean up the expression):
Note that in the Schwarzschild spacetime, the 1/r4 -term does not exist since Q=0.
The extra 1/r4 -term here actually leads to two possible solutions for circular orbits, one corresponding to a minimum (stable orbit) and one to a maximum (unstable orbit). We can see this from the potential graph:

The catch here, however, is that unless the black hole is extremal (its charge is as big as is allowed by general relativity), this minimum does not exist. So, a stable photon orbit is only possible if the black hole is maximally charged.
If this is indeed the case, the stable photon sphere lies at exactly the event horizon of the black hole (which, for the extremal black hole, is at r = 0.5 rs).
