An astrophysics moment:

Okay so as I understand it now, being in orbit around a planet or other object involves a balance between the speed of the flying object and the gravity of the object being orbitted. 17,500 mph is the speed for orbit of the Earth, the speed that spacecraft must reach in order to achieve and maintain orbit.

Okay, so let's jump to black holes and photons. Light is affected by gravity, right? We've seen it and detected black holes with it by what's called "gravitational microlensing". (And yes, other things too, such as double images of a single quasar, etc.) Light cannot travel slower or faster than 186,000 miles per second. Black holes are, of course, the strongest gravity wells known. Light gets sucked in too, which is why you can't see them.

But there must be a point at which the speed of light and the gravity of a black hole reach that same kind of orbit balance point. Photons are particles of light. So does light orbit a black hole?

We still probably couldn't detect it, since it would all be in orbit around the black hole and not flying off to be detected. Unless we were edge on to it and some of the photons escaped somehow, we wouldn't be able to detect it. Still. I wonder.