NASA’s Hubble Telescope Captures Black Hole Swallowing a Star 600 Million Light-Years Away

In a stunning cosmic revelation, NASA has shared an image of a black hole devouring a star — a rare and violent astronomical phenomenon that occurred 600 million years ago. The event, known as a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE), was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and confirmed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Array radio telescope.

The colossal explosion, caused by the black hole's gravitational pull tearing apart a star, produced a bright burst of radiation that has only now reached Earth. This light appears in the Hubble image as a bright dot slightly off-centre.

“A black hole revealed itself from 600 million light-years away when it ripped apart and swallowed a star,” NASA said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), alongside the captured image.

A Rare and Off-Centre Discovery

What makes this event — officially named AT2024tvd — particularly significant is its unusual location. Yuhan Yao, lead researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, noted that this TDE was observed slightly away from the centre of its host galaxy, marking the first such discovery by an optical sky survey.

“Right now, theorists haven’t paid much attention to these offset TDEs. I believe this discovery will inspire more research into these unusual black hole events,” Yao stated.

This finding may help identify a previously unknown population of “wandering black holes” — black holes that drift outside the centres of galaxies, making them harder to detect.

What is a Tidal Disruption Event?

A TDE occurs when a star ventures too close to a black hole. The black hole’s immense gravity stretches the star into thin strands — a process astrophysicists dramatically call "spaghettification." These stellar remnants then spiral around the black hole, heating up and emitting energy in the form of visible and ultraviolet light, which powerful telescopes like Hubble can detect.

Why It Matters

TDEs provide a rare opportunity to observe otherwise invisible black holes. According to Ryan Chornock, a professor at UC Berkeley and a member of the ZTF research team, “Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect.”

This discovery not only deepens our understanding of black holes and the extreme forces they unleash but also opens new pathways in studying how galaxies evolve and the mysterious dynamics of their wandering black holes.