Astronomers spot black hole whipping a star into a doughnut shape 300 million light years away

Astronomers have captured a star’s final moments as it is violently ripped apart and turned into a doughnut shape by a black hole.

Describing the findings as “right at the interface of the known and the unknown”, the experts behind the discovery said it is teaching them a lot about black holes.

Black holes are cosmic objects that are so dense not even light can escape their pull.

They cannot be directly observed with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, but their presence can be detected by their effect on other matter, such as stars.

Despite many recent discoveries concerning black holes, there is still a lot we don’t know about their nature - but the recent discovery of a black hole whipping a star into a doughnut shape has shed some more light on them.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted the star being consumed by a black hole nearly 300 million light-years away.

Called a “tidal disruption event”, the star is being pulled into the black hole while the black hole blows out radiation, captured by Hubble’s sensors which can pick up ultraviolet radiation.

There have been around 100 tidal disruption events around black holes detected by astronomers using various telescopes so far. 

"However, there are still very few tidal events that are observed in ultraviolet light given the observing time. This is really unfortunate because there's a lot of information that you can get from the ultraviolet spectra," said Emily Engelthaler of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian (Cfa).

"We're excited because we can get these details about what the debris is doing. The tidal event can tell us a lot about a black hole."

Changes in the doomed star's condition are taking