In 2021, multiple telescopes witnessed an unprecedented event. A star in a galaxy 250 million light-years away was sucked into the gravity well of a supermassive black hole. This event is known as tidal disruption. Astronomers hope that all the data obtained from this amazing event will serve to better understand how black holes ‘feed’.

The data collected shows that a star passed too close to a supermassive black hole, and it swallowed part of the star. This caused a burst of energy, which ground-based telescopes detected. Scientists hope that the data will help to better understand how black holes feed and behave in the universe.

Tidal disruption events are quite rare. But the ones that have been captured are enough to give us a fairly detailed understanding of what happens when a star gets too close to a black hole.

What happens when a star is eaten? Once the star is trapped in the gravitational field of the black hole. Thus, tidal forces stretch and pull it to the point where it separates. This event is known as a “disturbance”. Parts of the dismembered star then flow around the black hole in a chaotic fashion, colliding with itself and generating electrical discharges that glow at multiple wavelengths. This process is not instantaneous, but can take weeks or months while the black hole devours the stellar debris.

What happens when a star is eaten? Once the star is trapped in the gravitational field of the black hole. Thus, tidal forces stretch and pull it to the point where it separates. This event is known as a “disturbance”. Parts of the dismembered star then flow around the black hole in a chaotic fashion, colliding with itself and generating electrical discharges that glow at multiple wavelengths. This process is not instantaneous, but can take weeks or months while the black hole devours the stellar debris.

The debris forms a disk in orbit around the black hole. As material falls onto the black hole, a structure called a corona can form. This forms between the inner edge of the accretion disk and the event horizon of the black hole. This is a region of scorchingly hot electrons thought to be powered by the black hole’s magnetic field, which acts like a synchrotron to accelerate electrons to energies so high that they glow brightly at X-ray wavelengths.

Powerful jets of plasma are then launched from the black hole’s polar regions, shooting corona material in opposite directions, sometimes at nearly the speed of light. These astrophysical jets are thought to form when material is accelerated along magnetic field lines outside the black hole’s event horizon; when it reaches the poles, it explodes. Coronas and squirts are not seen in all tidal disruption events, but when they do occur they are usually seen together.