Here an air-GaInAsP metamaterial, a new bread of optical material, consisting of a composite of air and the dielectric Gallium Indium Arsenide Phosphide, is used to study such celestial phenomena as black holes, strange attractors and gravitational lenses. The air-GaInAsP metamaterial mimics a photon-sphere, one of the key black hole phenomena in its interactions with light. These new artificial optical materials, which mimic the effects of relativity, by bending light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, brings this type of research into astronomical phenomena to a table-top laboratory setting. This work, published in 2009, was carried out at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, USA.