https://www.space.com/black-hole-star-death-spaghettification
Telescopes have captured the rare light flash from a dying star as it
was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole.
This rarely seen "tidal disruption event" — which creates
spaghettification in stars as they stretch and stretch – is the closest
such known event to happen, at only 215 million light-years from Earth.
(For comparison, the nearest star system to Earth (Alpha Centauri) is
roughly 4 light-years away, and the Milky Way is roughly 200,000 light
years in diameter.) One light-year is the distance light travels in a
year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science
fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event,"
the new study's lead author Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal
Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham in
the United Kingdom, said in a European Southern Observatory statement.
Researchers caught the event in action using numerous telescopes,
including ESO's Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope.