The ESO telescopes record the final moments when a star is consumed by a black hole

A rare blast of light originating from a star was spotted by telescopes at the European Southern Observatory and other organizations worldwide when it was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. The phenomenon is known as a tidal disruption event and at 215 million light-years from Earth, the event was the closest flare ever reported.

Scientists have been able to analyze the data in unprecedented detail. In these tidal disruption events, when it’s pulled into the black hole, a star encounters something known when spaghettification. These occurrences are unusual and are not easy to examine. This event was observed by the ESO Very Large Telescope and its New Technology Telescope.

Scientists claim that a recent flash of light occurred near a supermassive black hole, and researchers investigated in-depth to see what occurs when a star is devoured. The black hole’s intense gravity rips the star into small spaghetti-like streams of material when a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole. A bright flare of energy that can be observed by astronomers is emitted when certain thin strands of material collapse through the black hole.

While the burst of light is strong and incredibly bright, in the past, astronomers have had difficulty investigating the effect because dust and debris sometimes distort it. Researchers find that when a black hole consumes a star it also launches a strong explosion of material outward obstructing the view from Earth. That happens because the energy released as a black hole consumes a star propels star debris outwards.

In this situation, the observation was possible because, for a short time after the star was torn apart, the tidal disruption event, known as AT2019qlz, was discovered. As the blackhole launched an outflow of fluid at a rate of up to 10,000 KM / S, researchers claim that this event was detected early enough to see a curtain of dust and debris being drawn up. AT2019qlz is located in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus.