When a star moves around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a close elliptical orbit, it gets partially tidally disrupted every time it reaches the pericenter, emitting a series of luminous flares, known as partial tidal disruption event (pTDE).
A research team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) recently discovered another outburst of a previous TDE, AT 2022dbl, and confirmed that it’s highly likely caused by SMBH repeatedly tidally disrupting the same star, making it the first spectroscopically confirmed repeating pTDE.
