{"id":816667,"date":"2026-10-28T16:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T16:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816667\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T16:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T16:46:11","slug":"astronomers-spot-biggest-star-ever-seen-swallowed-by-a-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816667\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers spot biggest star ever seen swallowed by a black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Astronomers have seen an enormous star being devoured and torn apart by a monster black hole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when they took a closer look, they realised that the stellar victim is one of the most enormous stars ever seen eaten by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/space-science\/black-hole\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">black hole<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The event, known as a tidal disruption event and given the formal name ASASSN-14li, was spotted in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/space-science\/a-guide-to-galaxies\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">galaxy<\/a> 290 million lightyears away in 2014, but astronomers have been studying the aftermath ever since.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately for the star, it strayed too close to the black hole and was torn apart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much of the star\u2019s gas that was left over remained in orbit around the black hole, but a portion was blown away by strong winds generated by the black hole\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/space-science\/accretion-disk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">accretion disk<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"816\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/black-holes-consume-everything.jpg\" alt=\"Will black holes consume everything in the Universe? Credit: Mark Garlick \/ Science Photo Library \/ Getty Images\" class=\"wp-image-146022\"\/>Credit: Mark Garlick \/ Science Photo Library \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Video explaining tidal disruption event ASASSN-14li. Credit: NASA\/CXC\/A. Hobart<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To study this ejected gas, astronomers used X-ray observatories such as NASA\u2019s Chandra and ESA\u2019s XMM-Newton to observe the stellar debris.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were able to take spectra of the gas and learn what elements were contained within it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They found the gas has an abundance of nitrogen, but a lack of carbon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If this is the case, it would be perhaps the most massive star ever seen being torn apart like this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See our coverage of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/news\/at2018fyk-tidal-disruption\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AT2018fyk<\/a> for another recent example of a tidal disruption event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have seen an enormous star being devoured and torn apart by a monster black hole. And when&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}