September 29, 2019

Artist's concept of tidal destruction event (Image NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the study of an event cataloged as ASASSN-19bt in which a supermassive black hole destroyed a star that came too close to it. A team of researchers led by Patrick Vallely and Tom Holoien discovered the start of the event thanks to the ASAS-SN network, obtained observations thanks to the NASA TESS space telescope, which was aimed at that area, and conducted follow-up observations using NASA’s Swift and ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescopes and the network of ground-based Las Cumbres Observatories.