The shadow of black holes. An analytic description. Based on the dissertation (Q277206)

The author of this book, written as a result of dissertation defended presents us a very intriguing and interesting reading of new and very simple subject: Black holes shadows, which present nothing else than the photonic sphere (area in a projection) corresponding to unstable photonic orbit in Schwarzschild, Kerr, Reissner-Nordstrom (with electric or both electric and magnetic charges), Schwarzschild-NUT, Kerr-NUT, Kerr-Newman or other generalizations of the last. The book is nice colored, and insightful. It presents, as I have told, a real interest for a large circle of readers. The author does not limit himself by general relativity, but put in discussion just from the beginning of the book the observational evidence for black holes and the possibilities to make easier the observations of black holes by observing their shadows. I would like to send grates to the author in the connection with this new term in black holes physics. Meanwhile, I have the following observations: a) Concerning black holes solutions of Einstein-Maxwell-NUT equations, there is need to cite a very important paper by Marek Demianski and Ezra Newman, published 10 years before the well known paper by \textit{J. F. Plebanski} and \textit{M. Demianski} [Ann. Phys. 98, 98--127 (1976; Zbl 0334.53037)]. I mean the paper: [\textit{M. Demianski} and \textit{E. T. Newman}, Bull. Acad. Pol. Sci., Sér. Sci. Math. Astron. Phys. 14, 653--657 (1966; Zbl 0184.55102)]. b) Another omitted reference is a much better known article by \textit{E. T. Newman} et al. [``Metric of a rotating, charged mass'', J. Math. Phys. 6, No. 6, 918 (1965; \url{doi:10.1063/1.1704351})], which found for the first time the solution for black hole endowed with an electric charge and angular momentum. c) The third observation is: there is a very nice result in black holes physics, which was obtained for the first time by \textit{N. R. Sibgatullin} from Moscow Mechanical Mathematical Department of the Moscow State University [``The interaction of short gravitational waves with electromagnetic waves in arbitrary external electromagnetic fields'', Sov. Phys., JETP 39, No. 4, 579--586 (1974); translated from Zh. Ehksper. Teor. Fiz. 66, No. 4, 1187--1199 (1974)], which contains the exact absorption cross section for photons by a Reisner-Nordstrom electrically charged black hole, which due to its electric charge distorts the Schwarzschild metric. d) Finally: In order to consider this book and dissertation a finalized work there is need to confront very nice calculations of the author with theories and observations of accretion disks, which could form around black holes of stellar origin. A photonic sphere (and as a consequence the shadows) forms not only around galactic black holes, but around stellar ones also.