Black hole rips apart nearby star.

Scientists recently got to witness a rare treat when a nearby star ventured too close to a neighboring black hole. As the star was being devoured, it let out one last large, violent burst of energy.

In a distant galaxy, a star orbiting a massive central black hole strays too close to the insatiable giant and is torn apart. But before it can be devoured, the star lets out one last scream in a flare of light that slowly echoes across the galaxy. Astronomers on Earth pick up this faint call and use it to map the nucleus of the galaxy from which it emanated.

This scenario is no bit of science fiction — a team of astronomers discovered one of these rare and dramatic events while combing through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey last December. Their observations are detailed in the May issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The light echo currently coursing through galaxy SDSSJ0952+2143 likely originated as in the scenario above, with the following details: One of the stars orbiting the galaxy's central black hole likely strayed off course (perhaps after being nudged into "a fatal orbit," as Komossa called it, after interacting with another star). Eventually the pull of the black hole would rip the star apart, but before the stellar material was pulled into the accretion disk, it emitted a burst of high-energy radiation.

Komossa likens the sudden emission of light to throwing tinder into the smoldering embers of a campfire.

"Imagine a campfire which is almost extinguished so there is not much light around, and so you cannot recognize your surroundings. In a sense, that is like the core of a normal galaxy," she told SPACE.com.

"If you throw some pieces of wood into the fire, it will shortly lighten up, and you can see the environment clearly. And sort of in the same way, in this galaxy, we observed a star was thrown into the black hole, like the piece of wood into the fire," Komossa added.
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