A hungry black hole. A tempting star. Dinner's on the table! - video

[ilan]

TESS watched a black hole tear apart a star
Eleanor Imster in SPACE | November 7, 2019

TESS watched a black hole tear apart a star from start to finish, a cataclysmic phenomenon called a tidal disruption event.

When a star strays too close to a black hole, intense tides break it apart into a stream of gas. The tail of the stream escapes the system, while the rest of it swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. This video includes images of a tidal disruption event called ASASSN-19bt taken by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Swift missions, as well as an animation showing how the event unfolded.
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A hungry black hole. A tempting star. Dinner's on the table! - ilan