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NASA's planet hunter has found a 'star-shredding' black hole
By James Rogers
Published September 26, 2019
A ‘star-shredding’ black hole has been spotted for the first time by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
“TESS data let us see exactly when this destructive event, named ASASSN-19bt, started to get brighter, which we’ve never been able to do before,” said Thomas Holoien, a Carnegie Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.
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Illustration of a "star-shredding" black hole from a NASA animation. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
The black hole that generated ASASSN-19bt is at the center of a galaxy located 375-million light-years away. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles.
The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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Scientists have been gaining plenty of new insight into black holes. In a separate project, astronomers recently announced that they have spotted “dramatic” black holes in six galaxies, which could shed new light on galactic evolution.
Experts also recently announced that a black hole swallowing a neutron star has likely been detected for the first time.
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In another project, scientists released the first-ever image of a black hole earlier this year, revealing the distant object in stunning detail.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
https://www.foxnews.com/science/star-shredding-black-hole-spotted