This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4845, located over 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. The galaxy’s orientation clearly reveals the galaxy’s striking spiral structure: a flat and dust-mottled disk surrounding a bright galactic bulge. The center of the galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole, which is 230,000 times more massive than the Sun.
In 2013 researchers were observing another galaxy when they noticed a violent flare at the center of NGC 4845. The flare came from the central black hole tearing up and feeding off a brown dwarf or a large planet many times more massive than Jupiter, which simply strayed too close.