The first star is discovered by astronomers being slowly consumed by a black hole.
Astronomers have discovered for the first time that a Sun-like star has been slowly eaten to pieces – three times the size of Earth – by a supermassive black hole located about 520 million light-years from our solar system.
The new discoveries will allow scientists to further understand the destructive relationships between many deep space objects.
According to a research paper published in the journal Nature, the closest supermassive black hole to Earth, Sagittarius A*, is located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and is four million times larger than our Sun.
Black holes are massive objects at the center of almost every large galaxy. It also forms when a massive star dies under its own weight and collapses. These space objects are so powerful that they pull in everything that enters their event horizon. Even light cannot escape their force.
According to a recent study, astronomers note that they have identified a supermassive black hole at the center of a relatively nearby galaxy as it feasts on bits of star matter.
The observatory also noted that the size of the dissipation is much larger as the star passes closer to the black hole on its elongated elliptical orbit.
The giant star is located about 520 million light-years from our solar system, researchers reported in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
A light year is the distance that light travels in one year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). It was seen passing through a supermassive black hole at the center of a spiral galaxy.
As with many supermassive black holes, this one recently discovered is a small one with a mass a few million times that of the Sun.
The data used for the study was from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.
Cosmic prey was observed orbiting the black hole every 20 to 30 days. As it comes to one end of its orbit, it closes in on the Orion, sucking up, or growing, its stellar atmosphere each time it passes.
The distance is sufficient to save the entire star from being cut. Such a phenomenon is called “repetitive partial tidal disturbance”.
After the stellar material is pulled into the black hole, the temperature of the material rises to about 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius), resulting in an enormous burst of X-rays.
Astrophysicist Rob Iles Ferris of the University of Leicester in England, one of the authors of the study, said: “What is most likely to happen is that the star’s orbit will gradually decay and this super It will get closer and closer to the massive black hole until it is. Close enough to be completely disrupted.”
“This process is likely to take at least years — more likely decades or centuries,” Eyles-Ferris added.
Eyles-Ferris said there are many unanswered questions about tidal disruption events and how the star’s orbit affects them.
“It’s a very fast-moving field right now. It’s shown us that new discoveries can come at any time.”
