NASA | Massive Black Hole Shreds Passing Star

This artist's rendering illustrates new findings
about a star shredded by a black hole. When a
star wanders too close to a black hole, intense
tidal forces rip the star apart. In these events,
called "tidal disruptions" some of the stellar
debris is flung outward at high speed while the
rest falls toward the black hole. This causes a
distinct X-ray flare that can last for a few years.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift
Gamma-ray Burst Explorer, and ESA/NASA's
XMM-Newton collected different pieces of this
astronomical puzzle in a tidal disruption event
called ASASSN-14li, which was found in an optical
search by the All-Sky Automated Survey for
Supernovae (ASAS-SN) in November 2014. The
event occurred near a supermassive black hole
estimated to weigh a few million times the mass
of the sun in the center of PGC 043234, a galaxy
that lies about 290 million light-years away.
Astronomers hope to find more events like
ASASSN-14li to test theoretical models about how
black holes affect their environments.
During the tidal disruption event, filaments
containing much of the star's mass fall toward the
black hole. Eventually these gaseous filaments
merge into a smooth, hot disk glowing brightly in
X-rays. As the disk forms, its central region heats
up tremendously, which drives a flow of material,
called a wind, away from the disk.
Music credit: Encompass by Mark Petrie from
Killer Tracks.