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the event is a preview of a similar feeding event that is expected to take place with the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy

galaxy NGC 4845, 47 million light-years away

Astronomers were using Integral to study a different galaxy when they noticed a bright X-ray flare coming from another location in the same wide field-of-view

the origin was confirmed as NGC 4845, a galaxy never before detected at high energies

the emission was traced from its maximum in January 2011, when the galaxy brightened by a factor of a thousand, and then as it subsided over the course of the year

By analyzing the characteristics of the flare, the astronomers could determine that the emission came from a halo of material around the galaxy’s central black hole as it tore apart and fed on an object of 14–30 Jupiter masses, and so the astronomers say the object was either a super-Jupiter or a brown dwarf

This object appears to have been ‘wandering,’ which would fit the description of recent studies

The black hole in the center of NGC 4845 is estimated to have a mass of around 300,000 times that of our own Sun

This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole

estimate that only its external layers were eaten by the black hole, amounting to about 10% of the object’s total mass, and that a denser core has been left orbiting the black hole

The flaring event in NGC 4845 might be similar to what is expected to happen with the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy

these events will tell astronomers more about what happens to the demise of different types of objects as they encounter black holes of varying sizes

Estimates are that events like these may be detectable every few years in galaxies around us

the emission brightened and decayed shows there was a delay of 2–3 months between the object being disrupted and the heating of the debris in the vicinity of the black hole.

could be at least as strong as gravity in supermassive black holes, the singularities that lurk in the center of many galaxies