This happens anytime a star gets too close to a black hole, at which point it gets shredded by the powerful gravitational field, creating a stream of hot, bright stellar material that then falls into the black hole and dims again. The first bite that astronomers spotted was in 2018 when the black hole – which has a mass 6 billion times that of the sun – suddenly brightened and stayed bright for about 600 days. Eric Coughlin at Syracuse University in New York presented the discovery on 12 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. This TDE, designated AT2018fyk, is only the second ever found to repeat itself. Every 1200 days or so, the same orbiting star gets a little bit too close and the black hole takes a bite in what is known as a repeated partial tidal disruption event (TDE). Nearly 900 million light years away, a supermassive black hole has the munchies. A supermassive black hole devouring material from a star (illustration)
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