Black Hole Tidal Disruption Event (Animation)

A wayward star is ripped to shreds by a black hole in this animation from the Science Communication Lab for DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron. Known as a tidal disruption event, the star is first stretched out by the black hole’s intense gravity, until it no longer resembles a star. The river of stellar material wraps around the black hole, and forms an existing accretion disk (or add to an existing one). These events can also produce coronae (clouds of ultra-hot plasma that radiate hard X-ray light) and jets that spew material away from the black hole at its poles. These events emit wavelengths spanning almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to high-energy X-rays. They are studied by many space and ground-based telescopes including the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), located at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California, and NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array) observatory. Credit: Science Communication Lab/DESY