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Researchers record the last moments of a ripped star
The star was about the mass of our sun, but the black hole “is a monster that is more than a million times more massive.”
Astronomers have managed to capture the final moments of a star ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. Using telescopes from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), they were able to observe the flash of light from the star produced during the process.
If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, it will be sucked into the extreme gravitational pull and can be dragged in long threads, a process known as “spaghetti”. To see in the video:
When the strands of the star are sucked into the black hole, a flash of light is created. Until now, astronomers have had a difficult time examining these flashes of light because they are often hidden by a curtain of dust and debris.
Researchers working with first author Matt Nicholl from the British University of Birmingham have now been able to examine the phenomenon of the so-called tidal disruption event in unprecedented detail. At a distance of just over 215 million light years from Earth, it was also the closest process of its kind to date.
A forehand made of dust and debris
“The idea of a black hole sucking up a nearby star sounds like science fiction,” Nicholl said. “But that’s exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event.” Since astronomers discovered the flash of light shortly after the star broke apart, they were able to observe the accumulation of the curtain of dust and debris. The luminosity first increased over the course of about six months and then gradually faded.
The observations suggested that the star was about the mass of our sun, Nicholl said. The black hole, on the other hand, is “a monster that is a million times more massive.”
The team hopes their discovery will help better understand the behavior of matter in the gravitational environment of supermassive black holes. They published their latest results in the magazine “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”. (sda / afp)
