The first illustration in this sequence shows a doomed star (orange
circle) that wanders so close to a giant black hole that the black
hole's enormous gravity stretches the star until it is torn apart. Some
of the disrupted star's mass (indicated by the white stream) is
swallowed by the black hole, while the rest is flung away into the
surrounding galaxy. The second illustration shows how the gas that was
pulled towards the black hole forms a disk and is heated before being
swallowed by the black hole. The third illustration shows a much fainter
disk, after about ten years have elapsed, when most of the gas has been
swallowed by the black hole.
