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By NASA
5 Min Read 3 Black Holes Caught Eating Massive Stars in NASA Data
A disk of hot gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration. Some of the gas came from a star that was pulled apart by the black hole, forming the long stream of hot gas on the right, feeding into the disk. Credits:
NASA/JPL-Caltech Black holes are invisible to us unless they interact with something else. Some continuously eat gas and dust, and appear to glow brightly over time as matter falls in. But other black holes secretly lie in wait for years until a star comes close enough to snack on.
Scientists have recently identified three supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies, each of which suddenly brightened when it destroyed a star and then stayed bright for several months. A new study using space and ground-based data from NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and other institutions presents these rare occurrences as a new category of cosmic events called “extreme nuclear transients.”
Looking for more of these extreme nuclear transients could help unveil some of the most massive supermassive black holes in the universe that are usually quiet.
“These events are the only way we can have a spotlight that we can shine on otherwise inactive massive black holes,” said Jason Hinkle, graduate student at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a new study in the journal Science Advances describing this phenomenon.
The black holes in question seem to have eaten stars three to 10 times heavier than our Sun. Feasting on the stars resulted in some of the most energetic transient events ever recorded.
This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star as it is being devoured by a supermassive black hole. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole — close enough to be gravitationally disrupted — the stellar material gets stretched and compressed as it falls into the black hole. NASA/JPL-Caltech These events as unleash enormous amount of high-energy radiation on the central regions of their host galaxies. “That has implications for the environments in which these events are occurring,” Hinkle said. “If galaxies have these events, they’re important for the galaxies themselves.”
The stars’ destruction produces high-energy light that takes over 100 days to reach peak brightness, then more than 150 days to dim to half of its peak. The way the high-energy radiation affects the environment results in lower-energy emissions that telescopes can also detect.
One of these star-destroying events, nicknamed “Barbie” because of its catalog identifier ZTF20abrbeie, was discovered in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California, and documented in two 2023 studies. The other two black holes were detected by ESA’s Gaia mission in 2016 and 2018 and are studied in detail in the new paper.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was critical in confirming that these events must have been related to black holes, not stellar explosions or other phenomena. The way that the X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical light brightened and dimmed over time was like a fingerprint matching that of a black hole ripping a star apart.
Scientists also used data from NASA’s WISE spacecraft, which was operated from 2009 to 2011 and then was reactivated as NEOWISE and retired in 2024. Under the WISE mission the spacecraft mapped the sky at infrared wavelengths, finding many new distant objects and cosmic phenomena. In the new study, the spacecraft’s data helped researchers characterize dust in the environments of each black hole. Numerous ground-based observatories additionally contributed to this discovery, including the W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes through their NASA-funded archive and the NASA-supported Near-Earth Object surveys ATLAS, Pan-STARRS, and Catalina.
“What I think is so exciting about this work is that we’re pushing the upper bounds of what we understand to be the most energetic environments of the universe,” said Anna Payne, a staff scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and study co-author, who helped look for the chemical fingerprints of these events with the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter Telescope.
A Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant from the agency helped enable Hinkle to search for these black hole events. “The FINESST grant gave Jason the freedom to track down and figure out what these events actually were,” said Ben Shappee, associate professor at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, a study coauthor and advisor to Hinkle.
Hinkle is set to follow up on these results as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign through the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program. “One of the biggest questions in astronomy is how black holes grow throughout the universe,” Hinkle said.
The results complement recent observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope showing how supermassive black holes feed and grow in the early universe. But since only 10% of early black holes are actively eating gas and dust, extreme nuclear transients — that is, catching a supermassive black hole in the act of eating a massive star — are a different way to find black holes in the early universe.
Events like these are so bright that they may be visible even in the distant, early universe. Swift showed that extreme nuclear transients emit most of their light in the ultraviolet. But as the universe expands, that light is stretched to longer wavelengths and shifts into the infrared — exactly the kind of light NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was designed to detect.
With its powerful infrared sensitivity and wide field of view, Roman will be able to spot these rare explosions from more than 12 billion years ago, when the universe was just a tenth of its current age. Scheduled to launch by 2027, and potentially as early as fall 2026, Roman could uncover many more of these dramatic events and offer a new way to explore how stars, galaxies, and black holes formed and evolved over time.
“We can take these three objects as a blueprint to know what to look for in the future,” Payne said.
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By NASA
Explore Hubble Science Hubble Space Telescope NASA’s Hubble Pinpoints… Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 7 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Pinpoints Roaming Massive Black Hole
This six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive black hole shows the collision with a star followed by an explosion detected in X-ray as well as Hubble Space Telescope visible-light observations. Credits:
Artwork: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Like a scene out of a sci-fi movie, astronomers using NASA telescopes have found “Space Jaws.”
Lurking 600 million light-years away, within the inky black depths between stars, there is an invisible monster gulping down any wayward star that plummets toward it. The sneaky black hole betrayed its presence in a newly identified tidal disruption event (TDE) where a hapless star was ripped apart and swallowed in a spectacular burst of radiation. These disruption events are powerful probes of black hole physics, revealing the conditions necessary for launching jets and winds when a black hole is in the midst of consuming a star, and are seen as bright objects by telescopes.
The new TDE, called AT2024tvd, allowed astronomers to pinpoint a wandering supermassive black hole using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, with similar supporting observations from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the NRAO Very Large Array telescope that also showed that the black hole is offset from the center of the galaxy.
The paper will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive black hole shows the following: 1) A supermassive black hole is adrift inside a galaxy, its presence only detectable by gravitational lensing; 2) A wayward star gets swept up in the black hole’s intense gravitational pull; 3) The star is stretched or “spaghettified” by gravitational tidal effects; 4) The star’s remnants form a disk around the black hole; 5) There is a period of black hole accretion, pouring out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to radio wavelengths; and 6) The host galaxy, seen from afar, contains a bright flash of energy that is offset from the galaxy’s nucleus, where an even more massive black hole dwells. Artwork: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Surprisingly, this one million-solar-mass black hole doesn’t reside exactly in the center of the host galaxy, where supermassive black holes are typically found, and actively gobble up surrounding material. Out of approximately 100 TDE events recorded by optical sky surveys so far, this is the first time an offset TDE has been identified. The rest are associated with the central black holes of galaxies.
In fact, at the center of the host galaxy there is a different supermassive black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the Sun. Hubble’s optical precision shows the TDE was only 2,600 light-years from the more massive black hole at the galaxy’s center. That’s just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.
This bigger black hole spews out energy as it accretes infalling gas, and it is categorized as an active galactic nucleus. Strangely, the two supermassive black holes co-exist in the same galaxy, but are not gravitationally bound to each other as a binary pair. The smaller black hole may eventually spiral into the galaxy’s center to merge with the bigger black hole. But for now, it is too far separated to be gravitationally bound.
A TDE happens when an infalling star is stretched or “spaghettified” by a black hole’s immense gravitational tidal forces. The shredded stellar remnants are pulled into a circular orbit around the black hole. This generates shocks and outflows with high temperatures that can be seen in ultraviolet and visible light.
“AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys, and it opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys,” said lead study author Yuhan Yao of the University of California at Berkeley. “Right now, theorists haven’t given much attention to offset TDEs. “I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event.”
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole. Science: NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) A Flash in the Night
The star-snacking black hole gave itself away when several ground-based sky survey telescopes observed a flare as bright as a supernova. But unlike a supernova, astronomers know that this came from a black hole snacking on a star because the flare was very hot, and showed broad emission lines of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon. The Zwicky Transient Facility at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, with its 1.2-meter telescope that surveys the entire northern sky every two days, first observed the event.
“Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect,” said Ryan Chornock, associate adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and a member of the ZTF team. “Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them.”
The flare was seemingly offset from the center of a bright massive galaxy as cataloged by Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey. To better determine that it was not at the galactic center, Yao’s team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm that X-rays from the flare site were also offset.
It took the resolving power of Hubble to settle any uncertainties. Hubble’s sensitivity to ultraviolet light also allows it to pinpoint the location of the TDE, which is much bluer than the rest of the galaxy.
This is a combined Hubble Space Telescope/Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole. Both telescopes caught a tidal disruption event (TDE) caused by the black hole eating a star. Science: NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Origin Unknown
The black hole responsible for the TDE is prowling inside the bulge of the massive galaxy. The black hole only becomes apparent every few tens of thousands of years when it “burps” from capturing a star, and then it goes quiet again until its next meal comes along.
How did the black hole get off-center? Previous theoretical studies have shown that black holes can be ejected out of the centers of galaxies because of three-body interactions, where the lowest-mass member gets kicked out. This may be the case here, given the stealthy black hole’s close proximity to the central black hole. “If the black hole went through a triple interaction with two other black holes in the galaxy’s core, it can still remain bound to the galaxy, orbiting around the central region,“ said Yao.
An alternative explanation is that the black hole is the surviving remnant of a smaller galaxy that merged with the host galaxy more than 1 billion years ago. If that is the case, the black hole might eventually spiral in to merge with the central active black hole sometime in the very far future. So at present, astronomers don’t know if it’s coming or going.
Erica Hammerstein, another UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher, scrutinized the Hubble images as part of the study, but did not find any evidence of a past galaxy merger. But she explained, “There is already good evidence that galaxy mergers enhance TDE rates, but the presence of a second black hole in AT2024tvd’s host galaxy means that at some point in this galaxy’s past, a merger must have happened.”
Specialized for different kinds of light, observatories like Hubble and Chandra work together to pinpoint and better understand fleeting events like these. Future telescopes that will also be optimized for capturing transient events like this one include the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. They will provide more opportunities for follow-up Hubble observations to zero in on a transient’s exact location.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
ZTF is a public-private partnership, with equal support from the ZTF Partnership and from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Related Images & Videos
Six panel illustration of Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd
This is a six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive back hole.
Black Hole TDE AT2024tvdu00a0
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.
Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd (Hubble + Chandra)
This is a combined Hubble Space Telescope/Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.
Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd Compass Image
This is a combined Hubble Space Telescope/Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.
Black Hole Tidal Disruption Event
This is a video animation of a tidal disruption event (TDE), an intense flash of radiation caused by the supermassive black hole eating a star. The video begins by zooming into a galaxy located 600 million light-years away.
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Last Updated May 08, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By USH
Several days ago, a massive blackout swept across large parts of Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France. Millions were left without power as the interconnected European energy grid experienced a rare and abrupt failure. While authorities quickly pointed to a "rare atmospheric phenomenon" as the cause, not everyone is convinced.
Here are some explanations of authorities as well as controversial theories:
According to REN, Portugal’s national electricity grid operator, the blackout was triggered by a fault originating in Spain’s power infrastructure. The disruption, they claim, was linked to "induced atmospheric variation", a term referring to extreme temperature differences that led to anomalous oscillations in high-voltage transmission lines. These oscillations reportedly caused synchronization failures between regional grid systems, ultimately sparking a chain reaction of failures across the European network.
What makes the situation even more intriguing is that just days before the blackout, Spain hit a historic energy milestone. On April 16, for the first time, the country’s electricity demand was met entirely by renewable energy sources - solar, wind, and hydro, during a weekday. It raises questions whether the outage was caused by a technical failure of this new renewable energy system.
While this achievement is noteworthy, it also exposes the fragility of a grid increasingly reliant on variable energy sources, especially solar, which can fluctuate dramatically with weather and atmospheric conditions.
Despite official explanations, some experts and observers remain skeptical. There were no solar flares or geomagnetic storms in the days leading up to the blackout, and solar activity had been relatively calm. Critics argue that while atmospheric disturbances may have played a role, they are not sufficient to explain such a widespread, synchronized failure.
Despite the fact that the blackout this time was probably not caused by solar flares or geomagnetic storms it has been proven that Earth’s magnetic shield is rapidly weakening, leaving us increasingly vulnerable to powerful solar storms. The magnetic north pole is accelerating toward Siberia, and the South Atlantic Anomaly continues to expand, ominous signs that a looming plasma event could bring consequences far beyond just technological disruption.
This has led to speculation that the blackout could have been intentional, possibly even a test run for handling future crises or threats to infrastructure.
Among the more controversial theories is the suggestion that this event might have involved the use of a graphite bomb, a non-lethal weapon designed to disable power grids. These devices disperse ultra-fine carbon filaments into high-voltage power lines, causing short circuits by creating conductive paths between lines. Such an attack would appear as a grid malfunction but could be devastating in scale.
Another controversial theory is that the outage has been caused by weather manipulation systems such as HAARP or the Ice Cube Neutrino observatory, constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.
Could this have been a covert drill or a demonstration of vulnerability? Some point to global forums, such as the World Government Summit, where figures like Klaus Schwab have warned about Black Swan: An unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences.
Whether the blackout was triggered by a rare natural event, a technical failure, or something more deliberate, it seems only a matter of time before we face a true Black Swan event. View the full article
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By NASA
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster Messier 72 (M72).ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto, M. Libralato As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) shared new images that revisited stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
ESA/Hubble released new images of NGC 346, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Eagle Nebula earlier in the month. Now they are revisiting the star cluster Messier 72 (M72).
M72 is a collection of stars, formally known as a globular cluster, located in the constellation Aquarius roughly 50,000 light-years from Earth. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters their regular, spherical shape. There are roughly 150 known globular clusters associated with the Milky Way galaxy.
The striking variety in the color of the stars in this image of M72, particularly compared to the original image, results from the addition of ultraviolet observations to the previous visible-light data. The colors indicate groups of different types of stars. Here, blue stars are those that were originally more massive and have reached hotter temperatures after burning through much of their hydrogen fuel; the bright red objects are lower-mass stars that have become red giants. Studying these different groups help astronomers understand how globular clusters, and the galaxies they were born in, initially formed.
Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and colleague of Charles Messier, discovered M72 in 1780. It was the first of five star clusters that Méchain would discover while assisting Messier. They recorded the cluster as the 72nd entry in Messier’s famous collection of astronomical objects. It is also one of the most remote clusters in the catalog.
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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Visits Glittering Cluster, Capturing Its Ultraviolet Light
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster Messier 72 (M72). ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto, M. Libralato As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) shared new images that revisited stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
ESA/Hubble released new images of NGC 346, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Eagle Nebula earlier in the month. Now they are revisiting the star cluster Messier 72 (M72).
M72 is a collection of stars, formally known as a globular cluster, located in the constellation Aquarius roughly 50,000 light-years from Earth. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters their regular, spherical shape. There are roughly 150 known globular clusters associated with the Milky Way galaxy.
The striking variety in the color of the stars in this image of M72, particularly compared to the original image, results from the addition of ultraviolet observations to the previous visible-light data. The colors indicate groups of different types of stars. Here, blue stars are those that were originally more massive and have reached hotter temperatures after burning through much of their hydrogen fuel; the bright red objects are lower-mass stars that have become red giants. Studying these different groups help astronomers understand how globular clusters, and the galaxies they were born in, initially formed.
Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and colleague of Charles Messier, discovered M72 in 1780. It was the first of five star clusters that Méchain would discover while assisting Messier. They recorded the cluster as the 72nd entry in Messier’s famous collection of astronomical objects. It is also one of the most remote clusters in the catalog.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Apr 25, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Globular Clusters Goddard Space Flight Center Star Clusters Stars The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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