Updated

Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Jun 12

Astronomers Predict Black Hole's 3rd Feeding on Star in 2025 After 3.5-Year Orbit

Updated

Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Jun 12

Astronomers Predict Black Hole's 3rd Feeding on Star in 2025 After 3.5-Year Orbit

Q: Did the black hole's 2025 'snack' confirm predictions, or did this cosmic behemoth surprise astronomers once again?

There is no solid evidence in the provided material that the predicted 2025 “snack” of AT2018fyk was actually observed and confirmed. The reporting and supporting content consistently describe it as a forecast based on the star’s roughly 3.5-year orbit, with astronomers expecting renewed feeding between May and August 2025 and activity lasting nearly two years. What is firmly established is the earlier pattern: the black hole partially disrupted the star in 2018, brightened again around 2020 when the surviving star returned, and appeared to finish that second feeding episode with a sharp X-ray drop on August 14, 2023. Those observations, from Chandra, Swift and XMM-Newton, are what underpinned the 2025 prediction. Some of the additional search material refers to other black-hole studies or to a different repeating partial tidal disruption event, AT2020vdq, which should not be confused with AT2018fyk. Those reports show that repeating disruptions can both confirm theory and produce unexpected details, but they do not demonstrate that AT2018fyk’s 2025 return was seen. So, based on the information available here, astronomers had made a credible prediction, but whether AT2018fyk’s 2025 “snack” confirmed it or delivered another surprise remained unverified in the cited coverage.

Q: How does a black hole's powerful spin distort the stream of a devoured star and the light escaping the cosmic feast?

A spinning black hole warps the shredded star’s debris stream and the escaping light through relativistic effects, especially frame dragging and strong gravity near the event horizon. In a tidal disruption event such as AT2018fyk, the torn stellar material forms a long stream that normally wraps around the black hole and collides with itself, helping it settle into an accretion disk and produce a bright flare. If the black hole is spinning, it drags spacetime with it. That can twist the debris stream out of its original orbital plane in a process known as nodal precession. The result is that the stream may miss itself on early passes, delaying those self-collisions and changing when the flare turns on, how bright it becomes, and how long it lasts. Researchers say this helps explain why tidal disruption events can look so different from one another. The spin also distorts the light from the hot, fast-moving debris. Gas orbiting close to the black hole reaches relativistic speeds, so light from the side moving toward Earth is Doppler-boosted and blueshifted, while light from the receding side is dimmer and redshifted. At the same time, the black hole’s gravity bends light paths, warping the apparent shape of the disk and even revealing parts of the far side that would otherwise be hidden. Together, these effects mean a spinning black hole does not just eat a star; it reshapes the debris flow and imprints an asymmetric, time-shifted signature on the flare astronomers observe.

1 articles · Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Jun 12

A supermassive black hole 50 million times the Sun’s mass is expected to resume stripping material from star AT2018fyk between May and August 2025, with the episode likely lasting nearly two years.
The forecast comes from observations showing the surviving star swings back on an elliptical orbit about every 3.5 years, rather than having been fully destroyed in the original 2018 tidal disruption event.
X-ray and ultraviolet emissions brightened again two years after the first flare, then dropped sharply in Chandra data from Aug. 14, 2023 — evidence the black hole had finished a second, smaller feeding.
The system lies 860 million light-years away, and researchers also suspect the victim was once part of a binary pair, with one star captured by the black hole and the other flung into space.

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Sky at Night Magazine6d ago

Astronomers Predict Supermassive Black Hole's Third "Meal" of Star AT2018fyk in 2025

Did the black hole's 2025 'snack' confirm predictions, or did this cosmic behemoth surprise astronomers once again?

How does a black hole's powerful spin distort the stream of a devoured star and the light escaping the cosmic feast?

Could infrared echoes from cosmic dust finally solve the mystery of our viewing angle to this star-shredding event?

AT2018fyk: The First Repeating Partial Tidal Disruption Event and Its Predicted Third Encounter in 2025

Overview

AT2018fyk is a rare cosmic event where a supermassive black hole, 50 million times the mass of our Sun and located 860 million light-years away, repeatedly feeds on a star without fully destroying it. Discovered in 2018, this event stands out because, unlike typical tidal disruption events where a star is consumed in one go, AT2018fyk shows a recurring pattern of partial stellar consumption. Each close encounter strips away more of the star’s material, creating intense X-ray and UV emissions. This ongoing cycle has allowed astronomers to predict future encounters, offering unique insights into black hole and stellar dynamics.

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Sky at Night Magazine6d ago

Astronomers Predict Supermassive Black Hole's Third "Meal" of Star AT2018fyk in 2025

Astronomers Predict Black Hole's 3rd Feeding on Star in 2025 After 3.5-Year Orbit

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AT2018fyk: The First Repeating Partial Tidal Disruption Event and Its Predicted Third Encounter in 2025

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