Astronomers found that a black hole has torn apart a star (a so-called tidal disruption event, or TDE) about 2,600 light-years away from the supermassive black hole in the center of the TDE’s host galaxy, indicating the presence of a second large black hole. Most TDEs have been detected at the centers of galaxies where supermassive black holes are usually found. These images of the galaxy where this offset TDE, known as AT2024tvd is found, show X-ray data from Chandra, optical data from Hubble, and ultraviolet data from Hubble. The center of the galaxy and the position of AT2024tvd, seen as the small, bright dot in the ultraviolet data, are labeled.

This six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive back hole shows the following:
1) A supermassive black 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 bight flash of energy that is offset from the galaxy’s nucleus, where an even more massive black hole dwells.