You are familiar with the situation, right? A black hole captures an unfortunate star, which ends up in orbit around it. Slowly but surely material from the captured star gets sucked away into an accretion disk around the black hole. Mostly the black hole just sips on this, but every so often, CHOMP! And some lucky astronomers have now seen this in action.

Very spectacular, but perhaps not quite as gruesome as Glenda Larke’s frog-eating post. Don’t go there if you have a delicate stomach or a phobia about snakes.