Researchers using Chandra, Swift, and XMM-Newton data have made important headway in understanding how — and when — a supermassive black hole obtains and then consumes material. This artist’s illustration shows a star that has partially been disrupted by a giant black hole in the system known as AT2018fyk. Astronomers correctly predicted when the black hole’s last snack on the star’s debris ended and predicted its next snack would begin between May and August of 2025. As long as the star survives the disruptions, these meals should occur every 3.5 years.

Researchers took note of AT2018fyk in 2018 when the optical ground-based survey ASAS-SN detected that the system had become much brighter. After observing it with NASA’s NICER and Chandra, and XMM-Newton, researchers determined that the surge in brightness came from a tidal disruption event (TDE), which signals that a star was completely torn apart and partially ingested after flying too close to a black hole. In these images, Chandra data of AT2018fyk is shown as an inset of an optical image of a wider field-of-view of the area.