Astronomers have spotted an apparent supermassive black hole snacking on a star 600 million light-years away, wandering through a galaxy with an even larger black hole at its core.<\/p>\n
The event, dubbed AT2024tvd, was first spotted by the Palomar Observatory\u2019s Zwicky Transient Facility and later confirmed by powerhouse space telescopes including Hubble and Chandra, which helped zero in on the cosmic crime scene. To the researchers\u2019 surprise, the responsible black hole was not at the center of its host galaxy, as supermassive black holes tend to be. Rather, this one was 2,600 light-years from the galactic center\u2014a huge distance on paper, but really just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.<\/p>\n
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) like this one occur when a black hole\u2019s gravity pulls on a star so violently that the less massive ball of gas is stretched, shredded, and swirled around the black hole, in a process delightfully called spaghettification. The fleeting burst of energy from the event is gargantuan, even rivaling a supernova\u2014the explosive death of a massive star\u2014in brightness. The burst of light is also visible across the electromagnetic spectrum, making TDEs an invaluable resource for spotting black holes that might otherwise be too quiet or hidden to detect, such as the recent rogue object.<\/p>\n
What makes AT2024tvd special is that it\u2019s the first offset TDE discovered by optical surveys, according to a forthcoming paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which is also posted<\/a> on the preprint server arXiv. The achievement demonstrates how rogue black holes\u2014warping spacetime and shrouded in darkness as they move through the cosmos\u2014can be spotted, as long as an unfortunate object sacrifices itself for the massive object to reveal itself.<\/p>\n
![\"Six](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Six-Panels-with-numbers-Artist-Concept-watermarked-1024x685.jpg\")
Six panels (clockwise) illustrating a black hole pulling in a star, stretching it into a disk, radiating light, and the light from the event from a distance, with a galaxy in background. Illustration: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) <\/p>\n