Chandra Release - February 6, 2017

Visual Description: XJ1500+0154

The artist's illustration of XJ1500+0154 depicts a black hole in the process of consuming a star. Called a "tidal disruption event," or TDE, it's when an object such as a star wanders too close to a black hole and is destroyed by tidal forces generated from the black hole's intense gravitational forces. The illustration resembles a bright nebulous pink worm shape wrapped around the black hole with frizzles of blue around the central area. X-ray telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory witnessed a TDE that has lasted more than a decade, much longer than any previously observed TDE. This implies that the event involved either the most massive star to be completely ripped apart and devoured by a black hole or the first instance where a smaller star was completely ripped apart. Optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Chandra X-ray data are shown in the lower right inset boxes, as a yellow-blue and bright purple source respectively.