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This release features an artist's rendering that illustrates the destructive power of a supermassive black hole. The digital image depicts a disk of stellar material surrounding one such black hole. At its outer edge a neighboring star is colliding with and flying through the disk. The black hole sits halfway down our right edge of the vertical image. It resembles a jet black semicircle with a domed cap of pale blue light. The bottom half of the circular black hole is hidden behind the disk of stellar material. In this illustration, the disk is viewed edge on. It resembles a band of swirling yellow, orange, and red gas, cutting diagonally from our middle right toward our lower left. Near our lower left, the outer edge of the stellar debris disk overlaps with a bright blue sphere surrounded by luminous white swirls. This sphere represents a neighboring star crashing through the disk. The stellar disk is the wreckage of a destroyed star. An electric blue and white wave shows the hottest gas in the disk. As the neighboring star crashes through the disk it leaves behind a trail of gas depicted as streaks of fine mist. Bursts of X-rays are released and are detected by Chandra. Superimposed in the upper left corner of the illustration is an inset box showing a close up image of the source in X-ray and optical light. X-ray light is shown as purple and optical light is white and beige.

Artist’s impression of ASASSN-14li

This artist's impression shows the aftermath of a supermassive black hole having destroyed a star. Tidal forces from the black hole ripped the star apart when it approached too close, and some of the star's gas (red) is orbiting around and falling into the black hole. A portion of the gas is driven away in a wind (blue). Two X-ray telescopes have probed the elements contained in this wind and concluded that the star was likely about three times as massive as the Sun before it met its demise.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Queen's Univ. Belfast/M. Nicholl et al.; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS, NSF/Legacy Survey/SDSS; Illustration: Soheb Mandhai / The Astro Phoenix; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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TakenAugust 22, 2023
Image CreditX-ray: NASA/CXC/Queen's Univ. Belfast/M. Nicholl et al.; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS, NSF/Legacy Survey/SDSS; Illustration: Soheb Mandhai / The Astro Phoenix; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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