Can anyone comment on the observation of an accretion disk, and what is the extinction effect?

Factual Questions
1

The newly released report on the observation of an accretion disk-- Hubble directly observes the disc around a black hole – seems understandable to a layman like me.

Any Dopers want to look at that and add anything interesting, or gloss some of it?

There was brief mention there of the “extinction effect.” What is its significance?

Thanks,
Leo

2

Dust preferentially scatters higher wavelengths of light, so when you view an object through dust, the light is both dimmer and redder then it would otherwise.

You can see this with the sun as it gets lower in the sky towards sundown and has to pass through more of the atmosphere, it gets redder and dimmer.