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Astronomers Pinpoint Wandering Supermassive Black Hole Using Stellar Destruction Event

The tidal disruption event AT2024tvd reveals a million-solar-mass black hole 2,600 light-years from its galaxy’s center, marking the first confirmed offset TDE.

Image
Artist's impression of a massive black hole, located in the dark oval at the center of the swirling cloud, accreting mass from a star (orange) that ventured too close. The star feels a gravitational tug from the black hole that is stronger on one side than on the other, which eventually rips the star apart. In the process, stellar material starts flowing onto the black hole, part of which is captured and the rest ejected, producing a sudden boost in luminosity, especially in X-rays.
Hubble spots a black hole swallowing a Sun 100 million times the size of ours
Image of a black background with a blurry orange disk at center, and a bright spot off to one side of the middle of the disk.

Overview

  • The black hole, weighing one million times the mass of the Sun, was detected 600 million light-years away through the tidal disruption event AT2024tvd.
  • This discovery is the first offset tidal disruption event (TDE) identified among roughly 100 such events, previously all tied to central black holes in galaxies.
  • NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, along with Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Array, confirmed the black hole's offset position and multi-wavelength signatures.
  • The black hole’s off-center location suggests it may be a remnant of a galaxy merger or the result of gravitational interactions ejecting it from the galactic core.
  • The findings, in press at the Astrophysical Journal Letters, highlight TDEs as powerful tools for uncovering hidden black holes and studying galaxy evolution.