The NASA video, rendered by an artist, illustrates the moment a “supermassive black hole estimated to weigh a few million times the mass of the sun” destroy a star. The incredible footage shows debris from the star being flung outwards while the rest is consumed by the black hole. The event is known as “tidal disruption”, which occurs when a star gets too close to a black hole and is pulled apart by its tidal force.
NASA Goddard, a space research laboratory near Washington, explained: “This artist’s rendering illustrates new findings of 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 Goddard added: “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 centre of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 million light-years away.
“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.”
More recently, NASA scientists discovered an “unprecedented” bright light beaming from a supermassive black hole.
The discovery was revealed on Saturday by NASA astronomer Tuan Do who tweeted a timelapse of his observation of the supermassive black hole in May.
Mr Do, an astronomer at UCLA wrote: ”Here’s a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*.
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“The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we’ve seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night!”
The black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is situated in the middle of the Milky Way, just 26,000 light-years from Earth, according to NASA.
Scientists observing the black hole for four days in April and May of this year using the Keck II Telescope in Hawaii saw the event.
Black holes are one of the most extreme entities in the universe. These mysterious regions of space-time exhibit such power that nothing – even light can escape from their grasp.
Once a black hole begins devouring nearby gas clouds and stars, material sucked inside heats up at the event horizon.
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