Ohio State astronomers capture a shredding star from the black hole

A NASA satellite and a network of robotic telescopes from the Ohio State University gave astronomers a glimpse of a black hole tearing a star.

The conditions must be ideal for a black hole to tear a star. The star can not be too close for it to be sucked in, or too far to bounce back and turn into a galaxy.

Thanks to a NASA satellite tasked with searching for new planets and working with an Ohio State-based telescope network, ASAS-SN, the researchers had an unexpected glimpse of these ideal conditions.

The researchers say that the supermassive black hole involved weighs about 6 million times the Sun's mass and lies at the center of a galaxy located approximately 375 million light-years away from the constellation Volans. The star itself had a size similar to that of the Sun.

"In part, it's really cool," says Patrick Vallely, a graduate researcher at Ohio State. "We say, 'Oh my God, we saw a star tear through a black hole!' And at least in astronomy, the cool factor is about half of what we do."

The other half, he says, is that they were able to detect it early, train more telescopes on the black hole and capture unprecedented data on the rare event.

"It's really exciting to have that first window on what's going on that we have not been able to see before," he says.

Vallely and other researchers published their discovery in The astrophysical journal. The researchers hope to be able to use this data to try to predict the next time a black hole shreds a star.