14654 2504.04102 10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14654-4 905 87 Shadows of three black holes in static equilibrium configuration 02 Physical Sciences 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences Regular Article - Theoretical Physics Theoretical Physics 1 14 2025 8 20 2025 4 9 2025 8 17 2025 8 26 National Natural Science Foundation of China 12403081 The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Funded by SCOAP3. 10052 85 85 8 8 Dan Li Yuxiang Zuo Shiyang Hu husy_arcturus@163.com Chen Deng Yu Wang Wenfu Cao https://ror.org/03mqfn238 grid.412017.1 0000 0001 0266 8918 School of Mathematics and Physics University of South China Hengyang 421001 People’s Republic of China https://ror.org/01rxvg760 grid.41156.37 0000 0001 2314 964X School of Astronomy and Space Science Nanjing University Nanjing 210023 People’s Republic of China https://ror.org/02c9qn167 grid.256609.e 0000 0001 2254 5798 School of Physical Science and Technology Guangxi University Nanning 530004 People’s Republic of China https://ror.org/02mjz6f26 grid.454761.5 0000 0004 1759 9355 School of Physics and Technology University of Jinan Jinan 250022 People’s Republic of China Abstract In this paper, we employ a ray-tracing algorithm to simulate the shadows of three equal-mass black holes in static equilibrium across a wide parameter space. We find that the shadows consist of a larger primary shadow and several distorted, eyebrow-like secondary shadows. The boundaries of these profiles exhibit self-similar fractal structures, which can be attributed to the photon chaotic scattering. In certain parameter spaces, we also observe the ring-like shadows, with the ring diameter associated with the spacing of black holes. Furthermore, when the black holes approach each other sufficiently, their shadows can merge into a standard disk, suggesting a shadow degeneracy between closely arranged triple black holes and a single massive, spherically symmetric black hole. The shadow features of the triple black holes revealed in this study have potential implications for analyzing the shadow formation mechanisms, as well as the gravitational lensing during the merger and inspiral of black holes.