A star that was caught being devoured by a giant black hole in a nearby galaxy turned out to have been one of the largest stars seen being consumed in this way, a recent study has found.
It's one of the biggest stars ever seen destroyed in a tidal disruption event.
The event, called ASASSN-14li, was spotted in a galaxy located 290 million lightyears away in 2014, but astronomers have been studying the aftermath ever since.
It occurred when the star strayed too close to a black hole and was torn apart – what is known as a tidal disruption event.
Much of the star’s gas left over from the event remained in orbit, but a portion was blown away by strong winds created by the black hole’s accretion disk.
To study this ejected gas, astronomers used X-ray observatories such as NASA’s Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton to observe the stellar debris.
They were able to take spectra of the gas and learn what elements were contained within it.
They found the gas has an abundance of nitrogen, but a lack of carbon.
The unique pattern of elements indicated a single star had been consumed but that the mass of this star was around three times that of the Sun.
If this is the case, it would be perhaps the most massive star ever seen being torn apart like this.
See our coverage of AT2018fyk for another recent example of a tidal disruption event.
