[Music throughout] Astronomers spotted a black hole
repeatedly munching on a Sun-like star
thanks to NASA's Swift satellite.
When a star gets too close to a black hole, gravitational forces
cause it to bulge and break apart into a stream of gas.
This is a tidal disruption event.
In some cases,
scientists see what they call repeating tidal disruptions.
That's what's happening here with an outburst called Swift J0230.
The Sun-like star orbits a monster black hole.
Every few weeks, the star gets so close
that the black hole pulls off about three Earth masses of material.
But the star survives.
Astronomers saw it in a distant galaxy
Thanks to a new way to analyze data from Swift's X-ray telescope.
They developed a new way of scanning the instrument's observations
so that they can quickly identify and study events like these.
After nearly
two decades in space, Swift is still learning new tricks
and teaching us new things about our cosmos.
NASA