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NASA captures images of "rogue" black hole devouring a star
🇦🇷 Argentina /Health & Science

NASA captures images of "rogue" black hole devouring a star

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • NASA released images and data of a "rogue" black hole tearing apart a star about 750 million light-years away.
  • The event, a tidal disruption, was detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility and studied with the Swift observatory and other telescopes.
  • This discovery validates a new method for finding supermassive black holes that are not at galactic centers, potentially revealing more hidden objects.

NASA has unveiled stunning observations and visualizations of a rare cosmic event: a "rogue" black hole, located far from its galaxy's center, violently shredding a star. The phenomenon, occurring approximately 750 million light-years from Earth, was initially spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility and subsequently analyzed using NASA's Swift observatory and other powerful telescopes.

This particular event is noteworthy because the black hole was found in the outskirts of a galaxy, a highly unusual location. Researchers, led by Robert Stein from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. They explained that this discovery confirms a novel technique for detecting these elusive objects, which often remain hidden until they interact with a star, causing a tidal disruption.

We were looking for these stellar fragmentation events as a way to find supermassive black holes that would otherwise be invisible and move away from the galactic nuclei where they usually reside.

— Robert SteinResearcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explaining the purpose of searching for these events.

"We were looking for these stellar fragmentation events as a way to find supermassive black holes that would otherwise be invisible and move away from the galactic nuclei where they usually reside," Stein stated in a press release. "With this discovery, which is one of the few that have been confirmed so far, we have validated a new technique and can use it to search for more."

The first signs of the event appeared in November 2025 as an unusual brightness in the galaxy Wisea J014656.04-152214.7. An AI algorithm flagged it as a potential tidal disruption event, despite its atypical location. Follow-up observations from telescopes like the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope in Chile and Swift confirmed the origin of the flash, with Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) data indicating the superheated material reached temperatures around 54,000°F (30,000°C).

With this discovery, which is one of the few that have been confirmed so far, we have validated a new technique and can use it to search for more.

— Robert SteinStein on the significance of the discovery for finding more hidden black holes.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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