So can someone explain why the event horizon is a disk in a single plane and not a fiery ball surrounding the entire black hole? I don't understand how a singularity point of gravity like a black hole can have an orbital plane like drain instead of pulling in from all angles?
FYI I did watch the video above and it helps but doesn't seem to explain the orbital plane
So it is a fiery ball. Anything inside the inner orbit gets sucked in immediately up until the outer ring. The issue is, this light is not being reflected back to the scope, so it appears black. Telescopes work by capturing reflected light. What you are seeing is the pattern of light reflected that is bent around the event horizon. It's brighter on one side as that is the light that is coming towards us, the darker side is the light traveling away from us. Light itself orbits closer to the black hole creating a bright ring. But to answer your question, matter gets immediately sucked in around the black hole to a point. Up until that point, the pull is less. After that point, it's instantly gone hence an "orbit".
What's even crazier to think about is how space time around the black hole are altered. So the light we are seeing could very well be at different ages as well. Absolutely awesome.