Supermassive black hole caught nibbling away on a star

NASA’s Swift observatory has spotted a black hole in a distant galaxy snacking on a Sun-like star.

ANU Astrophysichist and Cosmologist Brad Tucker said when a supermassive black hole feeds on a star, it’s called a tidal disruption event.

“Normally when it eats the start it eats all of it at once, the star gets too close the gravity of that black hole rips apart the star and that gas swirls around in the disc,” he told Sky News Australia.

“In this case what appears to have happened is this star is in a very weird orbit where it gets close but not close enough, so it gets eaten … but only little bits have been eaten at a time.”