Astronomers will keep a close eye on a distant galaxy later this year. They’ll be looking to see if a giant black hole is once again feasting on a star.

The system is known as AT2018fyk. It was discovered in 2018, when a galaxy 860 million light-years away flared brightly. The flare-up happened when a star flew too close to a black hole about 50 million times the mass of the Sun. The black hole appeared to rip the star to bits and gobble up the debris.

A couple of years later, though, the system flared again. That means the star survived the encounter – or at least some of it did. When the star once again came close, the black hole took another bite.

Last year, researchers concluded that the star originally was a member of a binary – two stars locked in orbit around each other. But the black hole split the binary apart. One of the stars was fired away like a cosmic bullet. The other entered a lopsided orbit around the black hole. It orbits once every three and a half years.

When the star gets close to the black hole, it loses some of its gas. The gas spreads out along the star’s orbit. Every year and a half, the gas begins to pour into the black hole. It heats up and glows brightly.

If that model is right, the system should brighten again this summer. So astronomers will be watching – to see if a black hole takes another bite of a star.

We’ll talk about another black hole tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield