Supermassive black hole ripped "elderly" star

The journal Nature published a new article in which astrophysicists talk about how supermassive black hole in the constellation Draco tore apart a star (the red giant) and swallowed her remains.

Star was torn apart, and after 2 months remains the star fell into a black hole, which led to the outbreak of the ultraviolet, which was recorded by scientists.

As it is known, is now believed that at least one supermassive black hole there in the center of most galaxies, but the reasons for the formation of these objects, scientists can not yet call. Also, studies show that about once every hundred thousand years, such a black hole captures one star out of their neighborhoods and tearing it apart - this event is accompanied by a rather long and very powerful flash.

A similar phenomenon was observed by scientists two years ago - in May 2010, in the constellation of the Dragon, which is from our planet at a distance of about 2 billion light years.

Allusion to the fact that the black hole captured star, astrophysicists discovered in late May of 2010 - then telescopes ultraviolet flare was recorded in the constellation Draco, which lasted throughout the summer of 2010 and came to an end only in late September.

Conducted by scientists calculations showed that the "weight" of the black hole is about 2, 8 million solar masses (the typical mass of supermassive black holes - from 1 million to several billion solar), and it is in the galaxy, where the average age is between 1 star 5 to 5 billion years.

Researchers believe that the black hole "ate" is likely a big star, which was captured by her attraction to the last period of its existence. In favor of these findings, says that in the spectrum of the flare line of hydrogen is almost completely absent - they are the primary fuel in fusion "furnace" of any star, and probably from a star in the last millennium of its rotation left only her hot helium core.