Credit: NASA

Black Hole Gobbles a Star
The illustration above depicts a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it, a long-predicted astronomical event confirmed by NASA's Chandra and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories.

Astronomers believe a doomed star came too close to a giant black hole after being thrown off course by a close encounter with another star. As it neared the enormous gravity of the black hole, the star was stretched by tidal forces until it was torn apart. This discovery provides crucial information about how these black holes grow and affect surrounding stars and gas.

NASA Image of the day archive