Supermassive black hole caught on camera stalking and eating a star

Astronomers have found something that sounds like it belongs in a science fiction film. During this TDE event, a supermassive black hole was captured on camera by multiple telescopes as it roamed freely through space, first stalking, then tearing apart and consuming a star.

This rare event was spotted 600 million light-years from Earth. It offered a chance to observe what happens when a massive, hidden object swallows a star in deep space.

The star’s dramatic end created a bright flash of radiation, revealing what scientists call a tidal disruption event (TDE).

These TDE events act like a spotlight on black holes, lighting them up briefly as they consume stars. But what made this discovery truly unusual wasn’t just the burst of energy – it was where it came from.

Not your usual black hole

This particular event, named AT2024tvd, was traced by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, supported by data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Very Large Array, they located the source of the flare. It wasn’t where black holes typically hang out.

The black hole in question weighs about one million times the mass of our Sun.

But instead of sitting in the middle of its galaxy, it was found roughly 2,600 light-years away from the center – extremely close in cosmic terms, but far enough away to raise eyebrows.

What’s more, the galaxy already has a much larger black hole, 100 million times the mass of the Sun, sitting right at its center.

This marks the first time a TDE has been observed offset from a galactic core. Of the approximately 100 known TDEs spotted through sky surveys, all the others have come from black holes in central positions.

Strange cosmic pair

At the galaxy’s center, the much larger black hole continues to draw in gas and emit energy. This activity labels it as an active galactic nucleus.

Meanwhile, the smaller black hole remains detached and drifting. Despite sharing the same galaxy, the two aren’t bound together as a binary system.

That could change. Over time, the smaller black hole may spiral inward and merge with the central giant. But for now, they’re keeping their distance.

TDEs and black holes

Tidal disruption events occur when a black hole’s gravity stretches a star into thin strands in a process known as “spaghettification.”

The shredded star material heats up, forming a glowing ring that emits light across the ultraviolet and visible spectrum.

“AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys, and it opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys,” said Yuhan Yao of UC Berkeley.

“Right now, theorists haven’t given much attention to offset TDEs. I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event.”

A supernova impostor

Astronomers first noticed something odd when sky survey telescopes detected a flash as bright as a supernova. But this wasn’t a dying star explosion.

The flare’s spectrum revealed high temperatures and broad emission lines of elements like hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon. That’s the signature of a star being torn apart by a black hole.

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), located at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, was the first to spot the event. It scans the northern sky every two days with a 1.2-meter telescope.

“Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect,” said Ryan Chornock, associate adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and a member of the ZTF team.

“Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them.”

To confirm the offset, scientists used other tools. Observations from Pan-STARRS, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey all suggested the flare was off-center.

Chandra confirmed the X-rays were coming from the same area. Then, Hubble stepped in to settle the question with sharper ultraviolet imaging that clearly showed the event’s location.

Where did this black hole come from?

The black hole’s origin is still uncertain. It lurks within the galaxy’s bulge, silent most of the time except when it consumes a star.

One possibility is that it was kicked out of the galaxy’s core. Theoretical models suggest that in three-body interactions, the lightest black hole can get ejected.

If that happened here, the wandering black hole may still orbit the galaxy’s center without being gravitationally tied to it.

“If the black hole went through a triple interaction with two other black holes in the galaxy’s core, it can still remain bound to the galaxy, orbiting around the central region,” said Yao.

More TDE theories on black holes

Another theory is that the black hole came from a smaller galaxy that merged with the larger one over a billion years ago.

If this is true, it could still eventually fall into the center and merge with the main black hole – but this will not happen soon.

Erica Hammerstein, another UC Berkeley researcher, examined the Hubble data to look for signs of an old galaxy merger. She didn’t find any.

“There is already good evidence that galaxy mergers enhance TDE rates, but the presence of a second black hole in AT2024tvd’s host galaxy means that at some point in this galaxy’s past, a merger must have happened,” she noted.

What happens next?

Catching a fleeting event like AT2024tvd requires the right tools. Hubble and Chandra, each designed to detect different wavelengths of light, worked together to lock in the black hole’s location and behavior.

Future telescopes may make this easier. The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are designed to track short-lived cosmic events like this one.

They’ll give scientists more chances to catch black holes in action – even when they’re hiding in plain sight.

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