An extraordinarily brilliant point of light seen in a distant galaxy, and dubbed ASASSN-15lh, was thought to be the brightest supernova ever seen. But new observations from several observatories, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have now cast doubt on this classification. Instead, a group of astronomers propose that the source was an even more extreme and rare event — a rapidly spinning black hole ripping apart a passing star that came too close.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1622/
Kind regards,
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
12 December 2016
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