Hubble telescope observes a hungry supermassive black hole devouring a star

While some stars reach the end of their lives with a bang, exploding in an enormous supernova, others end in a whimper, puffing up and throwing off material before shrinking and cooling to a small core. But very rarely, some stars suffer a more drastic fate as they are ripped apart and devoured by a hungry black hole.

Such an event happens only a few times every 100,000 years in a galaxy with a dormant black hole at its center, but recently,…