In an awe-inspiring feat of cosmic observation, NASA and Ohio State University have captured a rare and breathtaking spectacle: a star being torn apart by the unrelenting grip of a supermassive black hole. This extraordinary event, known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), was recorded in stunning detail thanks to cutting-edge technology, offering a front-row seat to one of the universe’s most dramatic phenomena.
In January 2025, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), paired with Ohio State’s All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), detected the cataclysmic event unfolding in the Volans constellation, some 375 million light-years from Earth. The light from this stellar destruction, which actually occurred 375 million years ago, has only now reached our telescopes, revealing a violent cosmic dance between a star and a black hole.
The black hole at the heart of this event is a behemoth, with a mass roughly 6 million times that of our Sun. The star, similar in size to our own Sun, ventured too close to this gravitational giant, triggering a rare TDE. These events are extraordinarily uncommon, occurring only once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way. For a TDE to be observed, the conditions must be just right: too close, and the star is swallowed whole; too far, and it’s flung away into space. But at the perfect distance, the black hole’s gravity stretches and rips the star apart, ejecting some material into space while trapping the rest in its inescapable pull.
Capturing such an event is no small task. As Chris Kochanek, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State, vividly described, “Imagine standing on a skyscraper, dropping a marble, and trying to get it to fall into a manhole cover far below. It’s harder than that.” Yet, NASA’s TESS satellite, launched in July 2018, made the impossible possible. Equipped with four wide-field cameras, TESS surveys vast swaths of the sky—400 times larger than the area covered by the Kepler telescope—scanning different sectors for days at a time. This expansive view allowed TESS to detect early signs of the TDE, dubbed ASASSN-19bt, just days after it began to brighten.
The research team tracked the event for 42 days, watching as it reached peak brightness after 37 days. “Only a handful of TDEs have been caught before their peak brightness,” said Thomas Holoien, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institute for Science. “Thanks to TESS’ continuous viewing zone, we have observations every 30 minutes, going back months—more data than ever before for an event like this.”
This unprecedented dataset revealed fascinating details about the TDE. For instance, researchers noted an unusual brief cooling and fading in the galaxy’s vicinity before its temperature stabilized and its brightness surged toward its peak. This anomaly challenges previous assumptions that all TDEs follow a similar pattern. “We once thought all TDEs would look the same,” said Patrick Vallely, a co-author of the study. “But with TESS’ detailed observations, we’re learning they’re far more complex.”
Published in The Astrophysical Journal, this groundbreaking discovery is a treasure trove of information. The detailed data from ASASSN-19bt could help astronomers identify future TDEs and deepen our understanding of these cosmic catastrophes. “We have so much more to learn about how TDEs work,” Holoien noted. “Capturing one this early, with such exquisite observations, is a game-changer.”
Thanks to NASA’s advanced technology and Ohio State’s robotic telescope network, we can now witness the raw power of a black hole shredding a star—a cosmic spectacle that is as terrifying as it is mesmerizing. This remarkable achievement not only highlights the wonders of the universe but also underscores humanity’s growing ability to unravel its deepest mysteries.