WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have captured a view of a colossal black hole violently ripping apart a doomed star, illustrating a extraordinary and chaotic cosmic event from beginning to end for the first time using NASA's planet-hunting telescope.
The U.S. space agency's orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, better known as TESS, revealed the detailed timeline of a star 375 million light-years away warping and spiralling into the unrelenting gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole, researchers said on Thursday.