Black hole swallowing a star, illustration
Illustration depicting how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed and ripped apart by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. Some of the star's material gets pulled in and swirls around the black hole forming a disc (orange). In rare cases, such as this one, jets of matter and radiation are shot out from the poles of the rotating black hole. In February 2022 a survey telescope detected an unusual source of visible light in an event named AT2022cmc. This prompted the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to study this phenomenon in more detail using their Very Large Telescope (VLT) and they determined this was the furthest example of such an event to have ever been observed. The light produced from AT2022cmc began its journey when the universe was about one third of its current age.
Size: 5412px × 3230px
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Photo credit: © EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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