May 9, 2025 — Astronomers have detected a dramatic cosmic event—a star being shredded by a black hole—in an unexpected location. Known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), this stellar catastrophe unfolded about 2,600 light-years from the center of its host galaxy, suggesting the presence of a second, wandering supermassive black hole.
Named AT2024tvd, the event occurred in a galaxy located roughly 600 million light-years from Earth. Unlike typical TDEs, which happen at galactic centers where supermassive black holes reside, this event’s offset location indicates a rare and intriguing scenario.
TDEs occur when a star ventures too close to a black hole and is pulled apart by its intense gravitational forces, a process nicknamed “spaghettification.” The remains of the star spiral into orbit around the black hole, generating ultraviolet and visible light as well as powerful X-rays when the material heats up to millions of degrees.
The discovery was first made by Caltech’s Zwicky Transient Facility. To pinpoint its location and study its properties, astronomers used a combination of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Their data confirmed that the black hole responsible for AT2024tvd is offset from the galactic center and is about a million times the mass of our Sun.
The composite image released with this study shows X-ray data from Chandra (blue), optical data from Hubble (orange), and ultraviolet light (light blue). A small, bright dot in the UV spectrum marks the location of AT2024tvd. Chandra’s high-resolution vision allowed scientists to clearly separate the TDE from the galactic center.
The origin of this off-center black hole may lie in a gravitational encounter involving multiple supermassive black holes. In such three-body interactions, the lightest black hole can be ejected from the galactic core—potentially explaining the rogue position of the black hole in this event.
Lead author Yuhan Yao of the University of California, Berkeley, and her team have detailed their findings in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper is available on arXiv at arxiv.org/abs/2502.17661.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center oversees the Chandra mission, with operations managed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from Cambridge and Burlington, Massachusetts.