NASA's Hubble records star's final moments as it gets eaten up by a black hole | Watch video

Devdiscourse News Desk | California | Updated: 13-01-2023 08:17 IST | Created: 13-01-2023 08:17 IST

Video Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Lead Producer: Paul Morris

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to observe in detail the last moments of a star as a black hole consumes it.

This event, termed "tidal disruption events" by astronomers, was observed in ultraviolet light. The All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN or "Assassin") first detected it on March 1, 2022. This network of ground-based telescopes scans the extragalactic sky about once a week to observe violent, changing, and transient events that are influencing our universe.

Hubble astronomers were able to conduct ultraviolet spectroscopy for a longer than normal time period due to the proximity and brightness of this energetic collision to the Earth. Although Hubble cannot take a close-up picture of the AT2022dsb tidal event, which is located 300 million light-years away at the center of the ESO 583-G004 galaxy, its powerful ultraviolet sensitivity allowed astronomers to analyze the light from the star, which includes hydrogen, carbon, and more.

News from #AAS241!Hubble recorded a star's final moments as it was ripped apart and eaten up by a black hole – getting twisted into a donut-like shape in the process.Find out more: https://t.co/CEGLVP2Nly pic.twitter.com/QUbdp6RpNa
— Hubble (@NASAHubble) January 12, 2023

Hubble discovered a bright, donut-shaped area of gas that is the size of the solar system, is swirling around a black hole. The swirling gas was once the star

"We really are still getting our heads around the event. You shred the star and then it's got this material that's making its way into the black hole. And so you've got models where you think you know what is going on, and then you've got what you actually see. This is an exciting place for scientists to be: right at the interface of the known and the unknown," said Peter Maksym of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.