Penrose diagram

A Penrose diagram conformally compactifies a spacetime while preserving causal directions, placing null infinity, timelike infinity, spacelike infinity, horizons, and singularities at finite coordinate locations.

For the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates of a positive-mass Schwarzschild spacetime, $UV=(1-r/(2M))e^{r/(2M)}$. The displayed conformal compactification makes radial null geodesics lines of slope $\pm 1$. The Killing horizons are $T=\pm X$, and the spacelike curvature singularities $r=0$ lie at $T=\pm \pi /4$, with $|X|<\pi /4$. Two asymptotically flat exterior regions each have past null infinity, null infinity to the future, timelike infinity and spacelike infinity. The two exterior regions cannot communicate by any causal curve; future-directed curves that cross a future horizon instead end at the black-hole singularity.

Spacelike infinity is the ideal endpoint of spatial directions in the Minkowski conformal compactification, represented by $(T,R)=(0,\pi )$. Unlike null infinity, it is a vertex of the radial Penrose diagram.

Future and past timelike infinity are ideal endpoints of asymptotically escaping timelike trajectories in a conformal completion. For the Minkowski conformal compactification, they are the vertices $(T,R)=(\pi ,0)$ and $(-\pi ,0)$; these vertices are not physical spacetime events.

This is the past endpoint of complete inertial timelike geodesics in the Minkowski conformal compactification, at $(T,R)=(-\pi ,0)$. It is the time reversal of future timelike infinity and is reached at infinite physical proper time to the past.

This is the future endpoint of complete inertial timelike geodesics in the Minkowski conformal compactification, at $(T,R)=(\pi ,0)$. The endpoint has finite unphysical coordinate time but infinite physical proper time. Accelerated timelike observers need not have this endpoint; a Rindler horizon can accompany an observer asymptotic to a null direction instead.

Null infinity is the ideal boundary reached by asymptotically escaping null geodesics in a suitable conformal completion. It has future and past components. A finite location on a Penrose diagram need not represent a finite affine parameter.

Past null infinity is the ideal boundary from which incoming null geodesics arrive in an asymptotically flat spacetime. In the Minkowski conformal compactification it is $T-R=-\pi$, with the retarded coordinate tending to $-\infty$ and the advanced coordinate finite.

For $g=q+C(d\psi +A{)}^2$ with $C>0$, projection of every causal curve is causal for $q$, since $q(\dot{\gamma },\dot{\gamma })\le g(\dot{\gamma },\dot{\gamma })\le 0$. Conversely, the lift defined by $d\psi =-A$ along any given base curve has the same norm as that curve. Thus the orbit-space metric $q$ describes the projected causal structure exactly. A Penrose diagram suppressing that circle is a quotient diagram, not the metric of a constant-$\psi$ slice.

A tortoise coordinate straightens radial null directions. For a static radial metric $-F(r)d{t}^2+G(r)d{r}^2$ outside a horizon, choose $d{r}_{\ast }/dr=\sqrt{G/F}$; then $t\pm r_{\ast }$ are constant along the corresponding radial null geodesics. Continuation across horizons requires choosing branches consistently rather than replacing an analytic derivative by its absolute value.