Much of star’s mass in 2019 tidal disruption ended up in symmetrical cloud that hid black hole. In 2019, astronomers observed the closest example to date of a star that was shredded, or “spaghettified,” after approaching too close to a massive black hole. That tidal disruption of a sun-like st
That tidal disruption of a sun-like star by a black hole 1 million times more massive than itself took place 215 million light years from Earth. Fortunately, this was the first such event bright enough that astronomers from the, could examine the optical light from the stellar death, specifically the light’s polarization, to learn more about what happened after the star was ripped apart.
The findings support one answer to why astronomers don’t see high-energy radiation, such as X-rays, from many of the dozens of tidal disruption events observed to date: The X-rays, which are generated by material ripped from the star and dragged into an accretion disk around the black hole before falling inward, are obscured from view by the gas blown outward by powerful winds from the black hole.
“One of the craziest things a supermassive black hole can do is to shred a star by its enormous tidal forces,” said team member Wenbin Lu, UC Berkeley assistant professor of astronomy. “These stellar tidal disruption events are one of very few ways astronomers know the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and measure their properties.
Patra noted that this deathbed scenario may apply only to normal tidal disruptions — not “oddballs,” in which relativistic jets of material are expelled out the poles of the black hole. Only more measurements of the polarization of light from these events will answer that question.
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