  The well-known Regge-Wheeler equation describes the axial perturbations of
Schwarzschild metric in the linear approximation. From a mathematical point of
view it presents a particular case of the confluent Heun equation and can be
solved exactly, due to recent mathematical developments. We present the basic
properties of its general solution. A novel analytical approach and numerical
techniques for study the boundary problems which correspond to quasi-normal
modes of black holes and other simple models of compact objects are developed.
