For the first time, scientists have captured on film a black hole swallowing a star, using the Swift satellite.

This is the first time for scientists using the Swift satellite to view the process in its entirety, at the onset. Normally they are only able to snap photos of the aftermath, flares of ultraviolet and gamma rays that radiate for years during a star's consumption.

Now we've seen the start of this event for the first time, David Burrows, of Pennsylvania State University, told Space.com.

The Swift satellite caught an unusual view of bright gamma rays gusting from outside the galaxy in March from constellation Draco, which lasted for two days. The atypical views prompted a closer look by scientists.

This was the first time we saw one of these big black holes going from quiet and silent to very loud and noisy, producing a lot of light and radiation, author Davide Lazzati of North Carolina State University said in a statement.

The flare originated from a relativistic jet directly after the black hold consumed the star, Swift J1644+57, most likely caused by a gravitational buildup estimated at one million times the mass of the sun.

This particular case is an unusual cosmic phenomenon, documented in the journal Nature, as the high-energy X-ray flares were 10,000 times brighter than scientists expected.

However, black holes are located in all large galaxies, frequently pulling at stars using gravity. A star is ripped apart by the pressure from the gravitational pull, heating to intense temperatures.

According to Burrows, it could take 3.9 billion years for the light emitted during the event from funnel-like jets to reach Earth, since one of the jets from this black hole was facing Earth.

Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year, Burrows told Space.com. It behaves unlike anything we've seen before.

NASA Astronomers Witness Super-sized Black Hole Swallowing Star.
his illustration steps through the events that scientists think likely resulted in Swift J1644+57. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cent
swift sees black hole eating star
This still from a NASA video animatino depicts how the black hole black holes, stars & galaxies, how black holes form, nasa swift spacecraft, x-ray astronomy, supermassive black holes Swift J1644+57 is eating a massive star, a process that scientists witnessed for the first time using the Swift satellite. NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler
black hole eating star
This is a visible-light image of GRB 110328A's host galaxy (arrow) taken on April 4 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. The galaxy is 3.8 billion light-years away. NASA/ESA/A. Fruchter (STScI)
swift black hole eating star
GRB 110328A has repeatedly flared in the days following its discovery by Swift. This plot shows the brightness changes recorded by Swift's X-ray Telescope. NASA/Swift/Penn State/J. Kenne
black hole eats star
Positions from Swift's XRT constrained the source to a small patch of sky that contains a faint galaxy known to be 3.9 billion light-years away. But to link the Swift event to the galaxy required observations at radio wavelengths, which showed that the galaxy's center contained a brightening radio source. Analysis of that source using the Expanded Very Large Array and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) shows that it is still expanding at more than half the speed of light. NRAO/CfA/Zauderer et al.
nasa swift J164457
Swift's X-Ray Telescope continues to record high-energy flares from Swift J1644+57 more than three months after the source's first appearance. Astronomers believe that this behavior represents the slow depletion of gas in an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole. The first flares from the source likely coincided with the disk's creation, thought to have occurred when a star wandering too close to the black hole was torn apart. NASA/Swift/Penn State
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