Space Cannibal: Monstrous Black Hole Caught Eating A Sun-like Star

Astronomers spotted a black hole repeatedly munching on a Sun-like star thanks to NASA’s Swift satellite. When a star gets too close to a black hole, gravitational forces cause it to bulge and break apart into a stream of gas. This is a tidal disruption event. In some cases, scientists see what they call repeating tidal disruptions. That’s what’s happening here with an outburst called Swift J0230. The Sun-like star orbits a monster black hole. Every few weeks, the star gets so close that the black hole pulls off about three Earth masses of material. But the star survives. Astronomers saw it in a distant galaxy Thanks to a new way to analyze data from Swift’s X-ray telescope. They developed a new way of scanning the instrument’s observations so that they can quickly identify and study events like these. After nearly two decades in space, Swift is still learning new tricks and teaching us new things about our cosmos. #blackhole #TDE #SwiftJ0230 Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Producer: Sophia Roberts (AIMM) Science writer: Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park) Editor: Sophia Roberts (AIMM) Narrator: Sophia Roberts (AIMM) Animator: Chris Smith (KBRwyle) Project support: Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle) Music credit: YouTube Audio Library