Astronomers are using Hubble to find out the details of what happens when a wayward star plunges into the gravitational abyss. In other words, black holes are messy eaters. There is a balance between the black hole's gravity pulling in star stuff, and radiation blowing material out. These are termed "tidal disruption events." But the wording belies the complex, raw violence of a black hole encounter. When the star gets close enough, the black hole's gravitational grasp violently rips it apart and sloppily devours its gasses while belching out intense radiation.Īstronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star's final moments in detail as it gets gobbled up by a black hole. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. About 100 insatiable black holes have been observed to date.īlack holes are gatherers, not hunters. This process formed a donut-shaped ring of gas around the black hole with superheated gas bleeding out in every direction. It was shredded, and pulled toward the black hole like a piece of stretched taffy. These spectra tell a forensic story of a star falling into a cosmic blender. Instead, Hubble astronomers took the fingerprints of starlight coming from the mishap. Hubble is too far away to see the doomed star getting sucked in. Like a police officer arriving quickly at the scene of an accident, Hubble vision was trained on the mayhem before the collision was over.
Hubble astronomers got a front row seat to such an interstellar demolition derby when they were alerted to a flash of high-energy radiation from the core of a galaxy 300 million light-years away. But entire stars can face that peril if they wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s no worry for astronauts who have yet to travel farther than the Moon. There’s no escape if you happen to stumble across one in the inky blackness of space. This makes them hungry monsters lurking in the eternal darkness. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's Achievementsīlack holes have such a voracious gravitational pull that they even swallow light.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.
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