Death by Spaghettification: Scientists Record Last Moments of Star Devoured by a Black Hole

A rare blast of light, emitted by a star as it is sucked in by a supermassive black hole, has been spotted by scientists using telescopes from around the world. The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, is the closest flare of its kind yet recorded, occurring just 215 million light-years from Earth. It is caused when a star passes too close to a black hole and the extreme gravitational pull from the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material - a process called 'spaghettification'. During this process some of the material falls into the black hole, releasing a bright flare of energy which astronomers can detect. Tidal disruption events are rare and not always easy to study because they are usually obscured by a curtain of dust and debris. An international team of scientists led by the University of Birmingham were able to study this event in unprecedented detail because it was detected just a short time after the star was ripped apart. Using the European Southern Observatory 's Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope , the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network, and the Neil Gehrel's Swift Satellite , the team was able to monitor the flare, named AT2019qiz, over a six-month period as it grew brighter and then faded away.