Artist's rendering of the light echo of a high-energy flash from a black hole. When a star is disrupted by a black hole in the nucleus of a galaxy, its debris is inevitably attracted and absorbed by the black hole. This sudden increase in the accretion rate causes an abrupt burst of ultraviolet and X-ray light because the gas from the disrupted star becomes very hot. As the high-energy radiation travels through the core of the galaxy it illuminates surrounding matter and so makes it possible to probe regions of the galaxy that would otherwise be unobservable. Credit: MPE/ESA