system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it possible to send light into orbit?

Forgive my ignorance, I’m not very smart in this area of science as far as astronomy/physics.

But I was thinking about how light can be bent when it goes around massive objects. If light can be Bent then if you were to get something with insane mass like a black hole, would it be possible to send light into orbit without letting it reach the event horizon?
gpt
Yes. There's a region around a black hole called the "photon sphere". This is the region where light could, in theory, orbit the black hole. The force of gravity is strong enough to prevent the light from escaping, but not so strong that it pulls it into the black hole.

However, orbits in the photon sphere are not stable. Light that crosses into the photon sphere from the outside will spiral into the black hole, while light that crosses it from the inside will escape into infinity. Only light that is emitted in the right direction exactly on the photon sphere will orbit the black hole.