The most massive stars in the universe are destined to explode as brilliant supernova before collapsing into black holes. Yet one huge star appears to have never fulfilled its destiny; in a twist of irony, the star wandered too close to a gargantuan black hole, which gobbled it up, shredding the star to bits and pieces.

That is the most likely explanation to come from authors of a new study published in Nature Astronomy describing the most powerful and most distant flare of energy ever recorded from a supermassive black hole.

The cosmic object was first observed in 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), based at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, and the Caltech-led Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey. The flare rapidly brightened by a factor of 40 over a period of months, and, at its peak, was 30 times more luminous than any previous black hole flare seen to date. At its brightest, the flare shined with the light of 10 trillion suns.