Chandra Release - October 21, 2015

Visual Description: ASASSN-14li

  The image features an X-ray spectrum at the bottom and an artist's illustration above of a tidal disruption event ASASSN-14li. A tidal disruption event, or TDE, is a cosmic phenomenon that occurs when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole.  The dominant colors in the artist's illustration are reddish orange and blue and its shape shows a curved line streaking out around and past a black hole.  Theory predicts that early in the evolution of a tidal disruption, material from the shredded star (the reddish-orange streak) should be pulled towards the black hole at a high rate, generating a huge amount of light. The amount of light should decline as the disrupted material falls onto the black hole, shown as a small black circle in the upper left of the illustration. In the case of ASASSN-14li, astronomers estimate the mass of the black hole is a few million times that of the Sun.  The illustration shows a disk of stellar debris around the black hole in the upper left of the illustration, and a long tail of debris that has been flung away from the black hole. The X-ray spectrum, or energy signature, obtained with Chandra (below) and XMM-Newton (not shown) both provide clear evidence for absorption lines, i.e. dips in X-ray intensity over a narrow range of wavelengths. In an X-ray light version of the Doppler Shift, the absorption lines are shifted to bluer wavelengths than expected, giving evidence for a wind blowing towards us and away from the black hole.