NASA telescope captures black hole ‘chomping away’ at star | space

NASA’s Neil Girls Swift Observatory has discovered a remarkable event in a galaxy 500 million light-years from Earth: Its telescope has detected a black hole “chomping away” at a star similar to our Sun.

This strange dynamic occurs in galaxy 2MASX J02301709+2836050, located in a constellation known as the Triangle (or Triangle). The star and the “hungry” black hole orbiting it — collectively called Swift J023017.0+283603, or simply Swift J0230 — were first observed by astronomers in June 2022; But the study on their interactions was not published until last Thursday (7), in the scientific journal Nature astronomy.

When a star gets too close to a giant black hole, gravitational forces create intense tides that break up the star, turning it into a tail of gas (think spaghetti). So, one end of this path heads toward the black hole, while the other edge escapes the system. These destructive events are called tidal disturbance events (Watch a simulation of this phenomenon in the video below).

Scientists see these events as flashes of light of multiple wavelengths, created when debris collides with a disk of material already orbiting the black hole.

However, researchers have studied variations of this type of astronomical event, such as what occurs in Swift J0230. In this system, tidal disturbances occur at irregular intervals, and the star is not distorted so much that it becomes spaghetti and is destroyed all at once.

Every few weeks, the luminous star Swift J0230 passes close to the black hole, only getting a “bite” from it. That is: the gravitational force of this black hole – whose mass is more than 200,000 times greater than the mass of our sun – tears part of the matter from the star, but it continues its orbit.

It is estimated that the star loses approximately three times the mass of Earth each time it is “bitten off.” So, in the end, the star will be destroyed forever.

Researchers have already detected other partial or periodic tidal disruption events. One of them, known as ASASSN-14koIt consists of a giant star that loses mass due to a black hole that revolves around it every 114 days.

The discovery of this same phenomenon in Swift J0230 is not the only reason the authors of the new study are excited. They were also delighted to make their discovery after using a new method to analyze data from the Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope, launched in 2004.

“The hardware, software and skills of the international observatory team have enabled the telescope to adapt to new areas of astrophysics throughout its life,” says Phil Evans, an astrophysicist at the University of Leicester in the UK and a long-time member of the observatory team. Observatory History Team Swift, in statement. “Astronomer Neil Gehrels, for whom the mission is named, oversaw and encouraged many of these transformations. Now, with this new capability, the telescope makes science even more interesting.”