In 2019, scientists collaborating on the Event Horizon Telescope project published the first image of a black hole. Filmmakers Peter Galison and Chyld King followed the team of researchers as they developed new methodology for data collection and imaging to make this possible, while also documenting the work of a team of mathematicians led by Stephen Hawking exploring what can be known about universal physical laws at the event horizon. For their feature film, Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, the filmmakers commissioned cartographic animations to describe and make perceivable the extraordinary distances and scales between Earth and the celestial bodies under observation.

One animation, drawing on the iconic Powers of 10 by Ray and Charles Eames, made palpable the immense distance by zooming out from our solar system to the scale of the galaxy and beyond. Moving at an apparently constant speed, we travel 25,000 light years from Earth to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and then a staggering 55 million light years from our galaxy to Messier 87, the much larger and much more distant black hole which was imaged by the researchers.

From the perspective of radio telescopes on Earth, these two black holes appear to be the same size, given the incredible massiveness of M87. A second animation depicted their scale relative to each other, and then brought them into registration, both appearing to be the same size in an abstracted night sky.

Scott designed and produced these two animations and collaborated on video concept and supplemental research for additional animations with Robert Gerard Pietrusko and Warning Office.


Feature film directed by Peter Galison, now on Netflix and Apple TV.

Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know
Peter Galison, director
Chyld King, editor
Robert Gerard Pietrusko, art director

Warning Office
Robert Gerard Pietrusko
Mark Heller
Adam Kai Ng
Scott March Smith