Watch a Star Get Devoured by a Supermassive Black Hole

Like­ly, in a moment of qui­et down­time, you’ve won­dered: Just what would hap­pen if a star, burn­ing bright in the sky, wan­dered by a black hole? What would that meet­ing look like? What kinds of cos­mic things would go down?

Now, thanks to an artis­tic ren­der­ing made avail­able by NASA, you don’t have to leave much to imag­i­na­tion. Above, watch a star stray a lit­tle too close to a black hole and get shred­ded apart by “tidal dis­rup­tions,” caus­ing some stel­lar debris to get “flung out­ward at high speed while the rest falls toward the black hole.”

This ren­der­ing isn’t the­o­ret­i­cal. It’s based on obser­va­tions gleaned from “an opti­cal search by the All-Sky Auto­mat­ed Sur­vey for Super­novae (ASAS-SN) in Novem­ber 2014.” The “tidal dis­rup­tions” wit­nessed above, writes NASA, “occurred near a super­mas­sive black hole esti­mat­ed to weigh a few mil­lion times the mass of the sun in the cen­ter of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 mil­lion light-years away.” It’s a sight to behold.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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