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| Sagittarius A* |
Lurking in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy is a supermassive black hole with a mass that is about 3 million times that of the Sun. What are the chances of a tidal disruption happening there? Astronomers estimate that these events happen only about once every 10,000 years, so the chances are low. Our Sun is certainly not in danger, because it is about 26,000 light years from the Milky Way's center, avoiding the possibility of gravitational interactions that might throw it towards the central black hole.
But, the resulting event would still be spectacular, as viewed from the safe distance of our Solar System. If our Galactic Center's black hole were to tear a star apart, the resulting X-ray source would easily outshine every other X-ray source in the sky besides the Sun, frying the instruments aboard Chandra and XMM! The center of the Milky Way would become a hundred billion times brighter in X-rays than it is now.
Revised: July 17, 2008