Blazing like 10 billion suns: NASA’s Swift sees a wandering black hole devouring a star

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has observed a rare supermassive black hole far from the center of a distant galaxy as it tore apart and consumed a star. Astronomers describe it as an apparent "orphan" because it sits unusually far from the galactic core, where supermassive black holes are normally found. No previous event of this kind had been detected at such a great distance from a galaxy's center.

"We were looking for these star-shredding events as a way to find otherwise invisible supermassive black holes wandering away from the galactic cores where they usually reside," said Robert Stein, a research fellow at The University of Maryland, College Park and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "With this discovery, which is one of just a couple that have been confirmed so far, we've validated a new technique and can use it to hunt for more."