Witness A Black Hole Annihilate A Star

Sometimes space is just so freaking pretty. Even when it’s violent as hell. For the first time, astronomers say they’ve witnessed a sun-sized star being ravaged by a black hole. It’s an awe-inspiring image, and the scientists themselves, who published their observations in Nature, could hardly believe it.

Ashley Zauderer, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for Astrophysics who led the second study, which focused on the radio wave emissions, recalled thinking, “This is crazy.”

“I didn’t believe it,” she said. “I called a colleague and said, ‘Will you make sure I didn’t make a mistake? Look at this data; it’s too bright.’ “

But where there is death there is always life. Here’s another image from the Hubble telescope of three galaxies with the two on the right forming stars at a super fast rate. The pinkish blue areas are the nebulae of new star formations, and the blue spots are young stars. The yellowish areas in the centre are older stars and the fuzzy stuff is interstellar dust. The two bright stars in the foreground are actually inside our own Milky Way. So don’t cry for the stars, there are lots.

[NASA, LA Times]