Nasa astronomers have discovered a black hole in a distant galaxy repeatedly nibbling on a Sun-like star, consuming a rate of about three Earth-masses of star material on each pass.
Nasa said on Thursday it used its Swift Observatory to capture the weird phenomena which astronomers recently called partial or repeating tidal disruptions.
"When a star strays too close to a monster black hole, gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The leading edge swings around the black hole, and the trailing edge escapes the system. These destructive episodes are called tidal disruption events," Nasa said on its website.
Scientists have called the unlucky star and its hungry black hole collectively Swift J023017.0+283603 (or Swift J0230 for short).
The team of astrophysicists propose that Swift J0230 is a repeating tidal disruption of a Sun-like star orbiting a black hole with over 200,000 times the Sun’s mass.
They estimate the star loses around three Earth masses of material on each pass.
"The object heralds a new era of Swift science made possible by a novel method for analyzing data from the satellite’s X-ray Telescope (XRT)," Nasa said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration explained that during the events, every time an orbiting star passes close to a black hole, the star bulges outward and sheds material, but survives.
The process repeats until the star loses too much gas and finally breaks apart.
Nasa said the phenomena has been observed before by scientists, including an outburst that occurred every 114 days, potentially caused by a giant star orbiting a black hole with 78 million times the Sun’s mass.
"Another recurred every nine hours around a black hole with 400,000 times the Sun’s mass, likely caused by an orbiting stellar cinder called a white dwarf," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.