For the first time, astronomers say they've witnessed a black hole consuming a star

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/la-sci-black-hole-20110825,0,7250111.story

Astronomers report seeing supermassive black hole swallowing star

The unprecedented sight was revealed in bursts of radiation from a constellation 4.5 billion light-years away, scientists say in the journal Nature.

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

10:07 p.m. CDT, August 24, 2011

For the first time, astronomers say they've borne witness to a supermassive black hole consuming a star.

Two papers released Wednesday by the journal Nature describe powerful blasts of radiation whose brightness and behavior can be explained only by a sun-sized star being torn apart by the gravitational forces of a black hole at the center of its galaxy, the authors say.

Scientists believe they have seen the aftermath of such stellar violence before, in the form of fading glows emanating from distant galaxies, in whose centers supermassive black holes usually reside. But they had never caught one in the act.

A constellation is a pattern of stars in the sky, like Scorpio or Ophiuchi, if you move just a few dozen light years that pattern doesn't even exist any more.

Why can't people who report on science have at least *some* idea what the fuck they are talking about?

science journalists from their staffs, this is what you get as a result.

shift and move in my relatively short time on the planet. I suspect traveling to our moon, or other planets in the solar system would change the appearance of our constelations depending.

That would be in Centaurus, Alpha Centauri is the closest star that can be seen with the naked eye, Proxima Centauri is closer but far too dim to see with the naked eye.

Rigel, a bright star in the constellation Orion, is about 800 light years away.

The stars are much, much too far away for travel within the solar system to change the aspects of the constellations.

ETA: There are really only three galaxies that can be seen with the naked eye, M31, the great galaxy in Andromeda and the Magellanic Clouds which are two dwarf galaxies relatively close to the Milky Way, our own galaxy.

There's only one galaxy that's visible (and just barely) to the naked eye. It looks like a fuzzy spot in the sky.

There are nebulae that are included in constellations, but they're "local."

Just read "stars in a constellation" and stop being so pedantic.

We are all supposed to read what they really meant, not what they actually wrote.

Accuracy, it's only for pedants.

The Milky Way is only about 100,000 light years across

Constellations consist of stars in our local region of the galaxy. When you are lucky enough to see the Milky Way at night, you get some idea how far the NON local stars are.

For reference, Betelgeuse is only 640 light years from Earth. Only VERY distany galaxies are 4.5 billion light years away.

The point in question is 4.5 Billion lightyears away. It is found in the constellation mentioned. That just means it is way beyond that group of stars but appears associated with the constellation. We are looking through the constellation to the point of black hole activity.

I'm guessing that the blurb writer was not the writer of the article, the article is pretty good but the blurb doesn't make any sense.

Since I had already read about this I didn't click on the article, I was only commenting on what was in the OP, I just looked over the article in response to your comment.

Oops, there goes another neighborhood... -- Amy Wong, Futurama

It did what??

LoL