Why Are Black Holes Black

[Daniel R]

OK, please bear with me on this one. I noticed on the last post regarding light-speed etc. that there are actually a couple of guys on here that seem to get Relativity. It is to them that I am pitching this one.

If we imagine a bright object (say a star) that is trapped in the orbit of a black hole and slowly falling towards the event horizon and we are distant observers watching all of this... Would we not start to see time slow down for the star as it gets ever so closer to the event horizon? The change in time for us as observers would surely look like the star is approaching an asymptote since the passage of time of the star at the event horizon which we observe from a distance would stop altogether.

The natural conclusion I come to is that a "Black Hole" should in fact have a super-bright ring around it as we would see everything it ever swallowed in its entire existence due to time stopping at the event horizon for a distant observer. The objects being swallowed themselves would notice a stop in time of everything OUTSIDE the event horizon, including us, but we would see time stop for them at the event horizon.

Sorry to be long-winded, but I just don't get why a black hole should not be bright around the edge.

Anyone who sort of understands me, please correct my wrong hypothesis.