Is this pic for real?

[morls]

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/a-star-is-torn--and-it-doesnt-happen-all-that-often-20110808-1ij54.html

To me, the photo in this article looks more like something superimposed over an image of the milky way...but I'm probably very wrong!!

[mithrandir]

It does say "artist's impression" in the caption. They've taken a Milky Way image and doctored it.

[morls]

Oops...:screwy:

didn't see 'artists impression'...

[Rick Petrie]

All I saw was 'computer simulation' but I guess it's the same as 'artist's impression':)

[bloodhound31]

If you have a look at the very bottom of this page (http://www.asignobservatory.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=65) I wrote a while ago, it shows a very similar thing moving.

[multiweb]

Sometime my corner stars look like that. I must be imaging in the vicinity of black holes. Anyway, that's my excuse from now on. :P

[bloodhound31]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[ManOnTheMoon]

Well not really that is a photo looking towards the center of the galaxy from about 28000 light years distant. If you were in the center of the milky way say 50 light years from the black hole all those background stars etc would look different and not as bright because you would be looking outward from the center and not inward from the outside

[Poita]

The pic is from a "simulation", though it looks like a quick photoshop job to me.
The Black hole eating the Star event was actually captured in the X-Ray part of the spectrum.
If you want to see pictures from the Chandra XRay observatory, they can be found here:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/n3115/

Very cool event to have accidentally captured though!

[morls]

That's more like it!!

[csb]

Thanks Bloodhound. Interesting and gives a good basic understanding, so very helpful.

Your image of a black hole effect is visually more appealing, even if it wasn't animated.

[ballaratdragons]

If they observed this phenomenon happening surely they must have imaged it.

Mr. and Mrs Professional Astronomers, where are the images of this stretched star? Please?
I for one would like to see the effect :)

[bloodhound31]

My pleasure dude. :thumbsup:

[higginsdj]

It doesn't show is the real lensing effects as depicted in real images of 'heavy' objects passing in front of other objects.

Cheers

[renormalised]

That piccie has nothing to do with the topic of the article. That pic's to do with gravitational lensing. The article has to do with a star that ventured a little too close to the supermassive BH at the centre of its home galaxy. That flash of light they detected was from matter being heated to multi-millions of degrees within the accretion disk around the hole. More precisely, the hotspot generated at the point where the star matter was being initially drawn into the accretion disk.