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Black holes are notoriously destructive to stars near them. Astronomers often see flashes representing the death throes of stars collapsing past the event horizon, a black hole they got too close to. However, in rare instances, a star isn’t wholly swallowed by its gigantic neighbor and is pulled into an orbit, causing a much slower death, which would probably be more painful if stars could feel anything.
In a typical scenario, that would have been the end of the story – the star got eaten, emitted some exceptionally strong X and UV rays, and we captured them using our instrumentation 860 million light years away. However, astronomers noticed another spike in X-ray and UV emissions coming from the same black hole about two years later.That second luminosity spike was likely caused by the star being partially devoured again as it was captured in a highly elliptical orbit around the black hole.
Either way, it definitely loses mass each time, as the second event is less luminous than the first. By that logic, the next one should be even less luminous if there is even a third event.Credit – Chandra X-ray Observatory YouTube Channel
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